Chronology

For the National Gallery’s ‘Encounters’ show, exhibits Seurat’s Bathers, his version of Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, next to the original.

“Although their general disposition has been retained, the figures seem emotional recollections of Seurat’s men and boys beside the Seine but without Wordsworthian ‘tranquillity.’ Instead, a swoosh of erotic energy runs through Hodgkin’s version, epitomized by the splashes of blue between the boys in the river. There is no doubt about the source in Seurat, but the result is unmistakably Hodgkin, fusing memory and sensuousness, abandon and control, all bathed in the anxieties of influence.” (Richard Shone, ArtForum International, 1 May 2000).

10 paintings are hung among the works in the Dulwich Picture Gallery Collection. The catalogue includes an essay by Judy Collins. “There are only 10 pictures in this show, but each one carries its own weight, and each is saying and doing something different. It’s an amazing achievement”, wrote Richard Dorment (The Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2001).

11 new small prints go on display at the Alan Cristea Gallery, Cork Street, London, among them, Eye; You Again; Rain; Dawn; Tears, Idle Tears; Away and Cigarette.

‘Philadelphia Collects Howard Hodgkin’ opens at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In celebration of H’s 70th birthday the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art shows 20 Large Paintings 1984—2002. They include Lovers, Dinner in Palazzo Albrizzi, Sad Flowers, Rain and Snapshot. To unify the spaces in the Dean Gallery, two rectangular rooms linked by a bridge, Hodgkin has the walls painted ultramarine. Catalogue includes essays by Robert Rosenblum and Richard Kendall.

For the ‘Galleries Show’ at the Royal Academy, London Gagosian takes the large rotunda, where Hodgkin shows eight small paintings, among them, Mud, Dirty Weather and Low Tide against walls of ultramarine.

Designs backcloth for Mark Morris Dance Group’s ‘Kolam’.

The Aldeburgh Festival stages a new production of Savitri, reuses Hodgkin’s backcloth and exhibits his stage designs at the Peter Pears Gallery in a setting devised by Patrick Kinmonth. The catalogue includes an essay by John-Paul Stonard.

Made a Companion of Honour.

Publication of ‘Howard Hodgkin Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné’, with an introduction by Nan Rosenthal and a conversation between the editor Liesbeth Heenk and Hodgkin.

Shows 38 new paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Chelsea, New York, including Echo, Spring, The Body in the Library, Undertones of War, Italy, Come into the Garden, Maud and Eclipse. The catalogue includes essays by Julian Barnes and David Anfam. Most works go on to Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.

Shows new work at the Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin.

Attends the burial of Susan Sontag in Montparnasse cemetery, Paris.

Finishes Flowerpiece, Listening, In the Bedroom, Eclipse, In Venice, Supper, Art, An Italian Landscape, One Damn Thing After Another, First Light, Poison Ivy, Ultramarine, Visitors, After Samuel Palmer and 48 Clarendon Road.

Shows small paintings at the Galerie Lutz & Thalmann, Zurich.

Retrospective exhibition of paintings curated by Enrique Juncosa and Nicholas Serota starts at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, where it is opened by Seamus Heaney. It then tours to Tate Britain, London and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. The catalogue, edited by Nicholas Serota, includes an essay by James Meyer, notes on painting processes and materials, a chronology and bibliography. At Tate Hodgkin has the walls painted with thin layers of blue, yellow and brown and in the final rooms the walls are covered with sheets of gold paper.

‘Writers on Howard Hodgkin’ published by Irish Museum of Modern Art and Tate Publishing features new essays by Colm Tóibín and Enrique Juncosa and reprints essays by Bruce Chatwin, Julian Barnes, Susan Sontag, William Boyd and James Fenton.

Barbican Art Gallery starts a tour of selected prints at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, which goes to Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal; Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; Winchester Discovery Centre; Turnpike Gallery, Leigh, Manchester and PM Gallery, Ealing, London. David Acton, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at Worcester Art Museum, Mass. writes in the catalogue. Barbican International Enterprises plan further tours for the exhibition, which has been seen by over 54,000 people.

Designs backcloths for Mark Morris Dance Group’s ‘Mozart Dances’, which opens at Lincoln Center, New York and then tours to Vienna, London, Chicago, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Toronto, Aukland, Washingon, Seattle, Montpellier, Tel Aviv and Boston.

‘Paintings 1992-2007’, 1 February – 1 April at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (designed by Louis I. Kahn) tavels to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 24 May – 23 September. It includes Afternoon Flowers, Bamboo, Old Sky, After Vuillard, Silence, Moonlight, Autumn, The Body in the Library and Mud. Paintings hang against Kahn’s raw silk in New Haven and partly on gold paper in Cambridge. The catalogue includes an essay by Richard Morphet.

Twenty new paintings shown at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London WC1, include House and Garden, Blushing and Degas’ Russian Dancers, In Egypt, Artist and Model and four large paintings, Home, Home on the Range; Where the Deer and the Antelope Roam; Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word and And the Skies are Not Cloudy All Day. The catalogue prints Seamus Heaney’s speech opening the Dublin show and a new essay by Alan Hollinghurst.

‘Howard Hodgkin & Edgar Degas’ at the Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, in which An Early Landscape is paired with La femme de Candaules.

Whitechapel Gallery commissions a new print, Sunset (copperplate sugarlift in 5 colours, handpainted in acrylic in 4 colours) as the Whitechapel Gift: all proceeds go to the gallery’s education programmes.

Makes his largest prints yet, As Time Goes By, referring to the song in Casablanca, 1942 (written by Hermann Hupfeld for a revue in 1931): “You must remember this /A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by.” They are made of five separate sheets and add up to 20′ in length and are in two colour ways, red and blue. Alan Cristea, who publishes them, shows them along with some of Hodgkin’s previous large prints, the ‘Venice’ series, Into the Woods and Frost.