Howard HODGKIN

Howard Hodgkin’s first foray into theatrical scenography came in 1981, when he designed both the sets and costumes for the dance Night Music for the Ballet Rambert in London. The director of the company, Richard Alston, has noted that it was ‘the sense of theatre – of toy theatre, really – in Howard’s pictures that commended him as the man for this kind of job. They often come with a sort of proscenium-arch shape around them: a strong sense of the frame, even when the paint spills over it. And of course, they’re rich in colour, which is one way of being effective on stage.’ Between 1981 and 2016 Hodgkin produced set designs (as well as, occasionally, designs for costumes) for several ballets, operas and dances; for the Ballet Rambert, the Royal Ballet, the Smithsonian Institute and the Mark Morris Dance Group. As John-Paul Stonard has observed, ‘Many of [Hodgkin’s] works have an enclosed, intimate and magical quality that evokes the space of the theatre, thick swathes of paint suggesting scenery drops, curtains or the proscenium arch. His sensibility and his particular touch, his very personal manner of putting paint on wood, seem to transfer naturally to the stage.’

Hodgkin seems to have found the process of producing set designs quite challenging, and at times somewhat frustrating. As he once stated, ‘Designing for the theatre is a completely different activity from making your own work. You are following a brief not of your own making, and you can’t have the same quality control over the end result. You don’t even know what you’ve made until you see it on stage, by which time it’s too late anyway.’ Nevertheless, as he stated elsewhere, ‘I like working for the stage because it’s the opposite of working alone in the studio.’

This large sheet is a design for the front drop cloth for a production of the ballet Pulcinella, with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Richard Alston, staged by the Ballet Rambert in 1987. Hodgkin provided several designs for the drop cloth and backdrops for the production, and also designed the costumes worn by the dancers5. Stonard has noted that, ‘For both works made for the Ballet Rambert, Night Music (1981) and Pulcinella (1987), and for the Royal Ballet production Piano (1989), Hodgkin had a close working relationship with the production team as the work developed. The collaboration with Richard Alston and Ballet Rambert was particularly close and fruitful…For both productions Hodgkin designed costumes after attending rehearsals and seeing the way that the dancers moved and the way they communicated the story. His designs for these are characterised by their unmistakeably Hodgkinesque colour…Hodgkin’s work for Pulcinella comprises perhaps the most strongly referential of his stage designs…His designs evoke both the light and colour of Naples and the excitement and sense of the story.’ Of his work on Pulcinella, Hodgkin pointed out that ‘The real problem for me was to find some kind of visual language which was not literally representational, did not refer to the Commedia dell’arte and which did evoke Naples. The act drop and the costumes were the most difficult – also Picasso was always lurking over my shoulder, but, in so far as we all succeeded, it was Stravinsky that got us through.’ The Ballet Rambert production of Pulcinella toured around Britain in 1987 and 1988 before its final performances at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.

The use of elements of collage in the present work is a feature of several of Hodgkin’s stage designs, although it is not generally found in his other works on paper. As Stonor points out, ‘When hung in a gallery, Hodgkin’s paintings need a great deal of space to themselves in which to glow and live their distinct lives. Sets by comparison, exist at very close quarters with all manner of other expressive activities, and therefore require, to a degree, the effacement of artistic personality; a delicate and diplomatic holding-back, a mutual respect…But what is held back is held back in the interests of a greater good: personality is transmuted into something more valuable. This distinction is an important one, and one which Hodgkin is very aware of. His use of collage in certain designs, a ‘de-personalised’ technique found very rarely in his work, underlines the difference.’

Most of Hodgkin’s relatively few designs for the stage are today in private collections, although a design for the back cloth for Night Music of 1981 is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Hodgkin’s collaged design for the poster of Pulcinella appeared at auction in 2018, while a different design for the Pulcinella poster was sold at auction in 2022.