Skip to main content

You are here

Home  /  Art  /  Art Minute  /  Dec. 17 Art Minute: David Hockney, Woldgate Woo...

Dec. 17 Art Minute: David Hockney, Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010

Art Minute, Art of the Week, toledo museum of art
David Hockney (British, born 1937) Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010. Nine digital videos synchronized and presented on nine monitors to comprise a single artwork, 2010. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey and Gift of Caroline Ransom Williams, Carl B. Spitzer, Edgar Park, Pauline Steinem, and Mrs. Joseph Roth, by exchange, 2017.14

Part of a video series portraying the four seasons, Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010 focuses on the expansive snowy landscape of a forest in East Yorkshire, England, where David Hockney lived as a child. By recording the forest with nine cameras at the same time, Hockney created what he calls a “Cubist movie” of the winter landscape from multiple viewpoints. In keeping with Hockney’s career-long interest in perspective, the digital video is displayed on nine flat screens, allowing viewers to see the changing viewpoints simultaneously in one visual space. 

Woldgate Woods is an important subject in Hockney's paintings, and this video is part of his continued exploration of time, landscape, and memory related to the site. The video captures moments in a literal moving picture, displaying the sense of changing time and space Hockney seeks to represent in his painted landscapes. The video series also highlights Hockney's progressive use of technology in his works, from drawings made with iPads to multi-media video displays. 

This work is currently on display in the exhibition Sights and Sounds: Art, Nature, and the Senses. 

Back to List