The Hockney Exhibit

Inside the thick glass doors the hibernating sunlight imposed itself on the interior’s darker places, causing shadows to glow neon green, brighter than the bright parts. The walls were a dulled white and the pale hardwood floors looked wet. Ryan instinctively wandered away from the happy couple and let them explore on their own. The haze began to fade from his vision and the faces of the people became discernible. It wasn’t the walking and talking people that Ryan was interested in, but rather the bold hovering faces created by David Hockney. The exhibit displayed work throughout his entire spectrum: abstract early sketches, sprawling photo mosaics, fully rendered oils, deceiving watercolors, and the many shifting stages in between. It was a collection of almost entirely portraits; always drawing the watcher’s eyes to the faces of the artist’s peers and family. Ryan mused over the faces; these faces that stood out far beyond the colorful clothes and benches made from simple overlapping stripes. They came together amongst the mess of the surrounding world, like miracles amongst blunders. Ryan saw himself in a mirrored column and his eyes shot between the blemishes. He had cut his hair the day before and it hadn’t looked right once it dried. He tried to casually shape it back using his hand comb and a little spit. He tried to not flash the last image of his face and instead went back to the walls lined with Hockney’s mother. She looked very much like Ryan’s own grandmother, Nana Commins. He only knew through pictures, many of which she was holding baby-him. He knew that somewhere inside lingered the remains of her gentle leathery touch.

He felt the girl standing next to him. He knew without looking that she was a perfect subject for a memory print, like a written description of a discontinued ice cream. At first Ryan only looked at her within the reflection of a crayon sketch’s protective glass. Her hair was medium length brown and she held a strapped trapezoid in her inverted hands. She wore cheap blue plastic hoop earrings and a simple patterned skirt that reached her ankles. She leisurely crossed Ryan and they continued in their opposing lines. Looking back over his shoulder his mind had been redirected- he didn’t care about Hockney’s vivid faces anymore. He decided to follow her, but not directly, he skipped many of Hockney’s phases and lingered in the connecting rooms, stealing snippets of her neck and the diagonal line of her underwear. He did his best to burn the natural thinness of her arms into the carbon paper. She never looked in his direction and he began to hunger for the light her eyes probably emitted. He pictured them as glowing blue glass dinner plates with speckled constellations that he could spend four years outlining and creating back-stories for.

As he exited a room Walter and Yvette approached, happy and a little stoned off of Hockney. Walter asked Ryan if he had already seen everything. Ryan imagined they must think he was unappreciative of art; jogging sideways through the rooms. He said something about taking a weird route and left them to their proper viewing. Ryan considered the proper way to view art slowly bouncing around with a pretty girl who talked about it, but not too much.

He slid carefully through the rooms of pleasant women wearing instructional headphones, smiling and nodding as the voice described the things they were looking at. The girl was in the far room not taking too much time on anything; her eyes didn’t bounce around. A foul dropper that lived in Ryan’s head since the ninth grade released several doses of its bitter tasting tonic and he no longer wanted to see the girl’s dinner plate eyes. He let her leave and turned back to Hockney’s people. He felt death and loneliness emanating from the layers of color that he interpreted as familiar faces. All of the paintings were dated and singed, most with descriptions of varying lengths stuck on the wall next to them. He became intimate with these faces, until he felt heavy ink in his veins. His mind flipped through projected pages of these people, Hockney’s people, many who were most likely dead or near-dead based on the dates. He thought of what a baby’s face must inspire in the hands of the near-dead. Ryan wished that he could remember his grandmother’s face and what it had meant to him, rather than what the mosaic of photos had showed him. He wanted to fall face first into those old family photos and examine his grandmother’s lined leather hands.

Ryan roamed further into museum feeling the air become steadily thick with a familiar taste. His reality had been becoming more and more intertwined with his dream world. He bit his lip too hard and his blood tasted like pennies. He came to a series of sketches done with white and black charcoal pencils on a middle ground paper. The faces were expertly detailed and striking compared to those of the previous rooms. Ryan’s mind registered the expressions of Hockney’s sketchy people with the same indefinite, vibrating twang that accompanied the walkers and talkers. These penetrating faces slid by him until, he found himself unable to move. The eyes of a pregnant woman caught him. Her face was fresh and confident looming over her stark white charcoal cotton shirt that was snuggled around her big round belly. Ryan felt as if this woman and her baby were more alive than he would ever be. His eyes bounced around the paper and he no longer saw the lines; he saw an entire home, an entire world, a series of events that he knew were not invented by him, or even Hockney. This vibrant face spoke to him. He was injected with the woman’s life story and as he read the date (1999) he felt the life of her seven-year-old child developing, much like a photograph lying in chemicals. The woman’s face gracefully aged seven years and her little boy was now tall enough where she didn’t have to bend to walk with him. He knew that they were happy with each other and that was enough for a moment’s happiness. Looking at this woman, who no longer belonged to Hockney, Ryan knew he could cry; he wanted to, but he didn’t. Instead he made a note to call his Mother soon and to try to leave all urgency out of his voice.

In the next room hung giant paintings, many made up of multiple canvases, which were thick with oil paint and were made up of sharp lines and opaque colors. His heart became self-aware and pumped his inked blood with increasing enthusiasm. The ink hit the walls and flowed back, further mixing with his blood. He saw now, not through his two eyes, but as if through his entire face, like a lighthouse’s beam. His beam of vision drifted past the walkers and he almost didn’t care what his face might look like to them. What he saw in the faces of the massive Hockney people was that of the jaded writers of the world’s history. That, however, wasn’t what concerned him most; he was being drawn into the space in between the people. Most of the paintings were of two people that were separated by varying spans of negative space. The space seemed to speak to him even more than the faces. What it said was that we all live and die alone. Not a new thought, but in this palpable form, it sent Ryan’s mind into a series or arcing, clenching movements. He slid on the wet floor, shuffling his tattered brown shoes, head down, to an arrangement of cushy one and two-person seats; velvets plump seats that shimmered like black peaches with sun-catching fuzz. He sat and cupped his hands around his nose with his elbows on his knees. It took him an unknown amount of time to realize that, to others, it would appear as if he was praying. He changed his hands to show that he was thinking quite deeply, but not praying.

A girl sat one two-person black peach away from him and cycled a deep breath, straightening her books. She looked around the room and didn’t see who she was looking for. Ryan could not stop thinking about the space in between him and everyone else in the room. That was all he saw as he looked at the shiny hardwood floor and the reflections of the pleasant women with headphones. The least space existed in between him and the girl with the books. She had short brown hair and he noticed that the top book of her stack was medium sized and yellow. He didn’t talk to the girl. She didn’t talk to him. The space between them only became greater. Yvette and Walter appeared. They said something about seeing the rest of the museum, whose existence Ryan had failed to acknowledge up until that moment. He didn’t feel like seeing anything else, but didn’t say so.