Gary Hume

Summary

Hume’s Portraits is a series of ten screenprints commissioned by Charles Booth-Clibborn and published by him under his imprint, The Paragon Press, London. They were proofed and printed at Coriander Studio, London in an edition of thirty-six plus ten artist’s proofs. Tate’s copy is number eighteen in the edition. Each print was made using between three and fifteen colours and coated with several layers of varnish in sections. The varnish results in a sheer, glossy surface similar to that achieved by Hume’s use of household gloss paint in his paintings such as Incubus 1991 (Tate T07184) and Water Painting 1999 (Tate T07618). The prints are based on paintings Hume made between 1994 and 1998. Some of these paintings were derived from photographs, others from Hume’s imagination. Each print has a subtitle related to the original painting. This is the eighth image and its subtitle is Cerith. It is based on a larger painting of the same title (1997, private collection, New York) in gloss paint on aluminium panel, a portrait of Hume’s friend, British artist Cerith Wyn Evans (born 1958). Like other portraits in the series, Cerith represents the subject’s face and neck with a large monochrome area. In the original painting this is a graded bluish grey, intensifying in tone in a horizontal band at the middle of the face. In the print version the area is flat beige without tonal gradations. The subject’s short hair is deep blue and his only features are thickly-lashed eyes outlined in pale yellow. A pale pink disc is positioned at the side of Cerith’s face at the level of his ear, in a manner similar to the discs on, Lady Parker (Tate P78687), the previous image in the series.

Screenprinting is a medium ideally suited to Hume’s imagery since it involves layering areas of flat colour. His paintings of the early to mid 1990s are characterised by the use of simple blocks of vivid colour and elegant line reminiscent of the late prints of French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). During this period Hume painted such iconic subjects as the Christian Madonna 1993 (private collection, London), as well as such everyday objects as flowers, birds, children’s toys and feet or hands. He also made portraits of artists and celebrities, from which he derived the images used in this portfolio of prints. Portraits provides a refined version of Hume’s painterly exploration of the difference between the surface and what lies underneath, what goes into the making of the image, or the mask, of a public icon and how a generic figure is depicted. Pushing Hume’s images still further towards abstraction, this portfolio contributes to the investigation into the signs or language of visual representation central to contemporary figurative painting.


Further reading:
Patrick Elliott, Jeremy Lewison, Contemporary British Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000, London 2001, pp.10, 19, 146-57 and 320, reproduced (colour) p.146
Gary Hume, exhibition catalogue, British Pavilion, XLVIII Venice Biennale, British Council 1999, p.51
Gary Hume, exhibition catalogue, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht 1996

Elizabeth Manchester
May 2002

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