Gary Hume
September 2004
Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1996 and winner of the Jerwood Prize in 1997, Gary Hume was educated at Goldsmiths' College of Art (1985-1988) and took part in Damien Hirst's Freeze exhibition in 1988. Hume paints, using ordinary household gloss paint, 'images of women, plants and animals. I find it very difficult to paint men. I can't make them passive, I can't project dilemma onto them, they always seem about to get up and tell me about themselves' (1).
Early in his career, he produced an immaculate series of door paintings (1988-92), but soon felt that the psychology of colour was leading him down a blind alley.
In 1994 he produced a strange video of himself, fully clothed in a bathtub, reciting the legend of King Canute, wearing a cardboard Burger King crown (Me as King Cnut). He then returned to painting, producing among other works, huge glossy portraits of minor celebrities.
The portrait of ex-Radio One disc jockey Tony Blackburn (1993), takes the unlikely form of a huge three-leaf clover, 'the bottom two leaves look like his cheeks, and the black mark going round the top looks exactly like his haircut' (2). Hume's influences appear pretty arbitrary; when questioned, he confessed, 'I see things in magazines, and newspapers every now and then photographs that I might take. Then again I might have an idea about something and go to the library to find a picture of it' (3).
Portraits such as Patsy Kensit (1994), minor actress and wife of Oasis lead singer Liam Gallagher and Kate (1996), the supermodel Kate Moss, make a superficial nod in the direction of Andy Warhol's celebrity portraits of the sixties and seventies. However, Hume chooses 'a useless iconography. His subjects are not mass produced myths, but the insignificant visions produced by the masses themselves' (4). For Hume's first print portfolio Portraits, he projected his painted images and redrew them onto paper. He then made any changes and corrections before printing.
1. Interview with Adrian Dannatt, Flash Art, no. 183, Summer 1995, p.97
2. Interview with Carl Freedman, Minky Manky (South London Gallery, London. 1995), no pagination
3. Op. Cit.
4. Francesco Bonami, 'Reflections in a Golden Eye', Gary Hume (Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. 1996), no pagination
Early in his career, he produced an immaculate series of door paintings (1988-92), but soon felt that the psychology of colour was leading him down a blind alley.
In 1994 he produced a strange video of himself, fully clothed in a bathtub, reciting the legend of King Canute, wearing a cardboard Burger King crown (Me as King Cnut). He then returned to painting, producing among other works, huge glossy portraits of minor celebrities.
The portrait of ex-Radio One disc jockey Tony Blackburn (1993), takes the unlikely form of a huge three-leaf clover, 'the bottom two leaves look like his cheeks, and the black mark going round the top looks exactly like his haircut' (2). Hume's influences appear pretty arbitrary; when questioned, he confessed, 'I see things in magazines, and newspapers every now and then photographs that I might take. Then again I might have an idea about something and go to the library to find a picture of it' (3).
Portraits such as Patsy Kensit (1994), minor actress and wife of Oasis lead singer Liam Gallagher and Kate (1996), the supermodel Kate Moss, make a superficial nod in the direction of Andy Warhol's celebrity portraits of the sixties and seventies. However, Hume chooses 'a useless iconography. His subjects are not mass produced myths, but the insignificant visions produced by the masses themselves' (4). For Hume's first print portfolio Portraits, he projected his painted images and redrew them onto paper. He then made any changes and corrections before printing.
1. Interview with Adrian Dannatt, Flash Art, no. 183, Summer 1995, p.97
2. Interview with Carl Freedman, Minky Manky (South London Gallery, London. 1995), no pagination
3. Op. Cit.
4. Francesco Bonami, 'Reflections in a Golden Eye', Gary Hume (Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. 1996), no pagination
Jennifer Ramkalawon