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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The first time Howard Hodgkin came to the United States, he was seven years old. The year was 1940, and Hodgkin, whose father was serving in the Royal Air Force, had been evacuated from his native England, along with his mother and sister. They lived in New York, whose many advantages he now summarizes in a single phrase: "I could go to look at pictures."
An early injection of America is recommended for any British subject bent on creativity. Nobody reading Martin Amis, for instance, on the year that he spent in Princeton in 1959 (his father had come to teach there) can doubt the fluorescent shock that it administered to his system. In Hodgkin's case, nothing in his stay was more dramatic than its end. In 1943, the boat on which the Hodgkins returned to Europe took a traumatizing twenty-three days to reach Portugal, only to be torpedoed on its subsequent voyage, and the plane that bore the family on to England was, on its next flight, reported missing, feared lost; the actor Leslie Howard was among the passengers. For those who claim to see much in Hodgkin's art that is forever in danger of going missing, feared lost--places, persons, the clutch and grab of disquiet and desire--these remembrances are rich in hints.
His life since then has been a stew of the restless and the sedate. He was educated, but not much, constantly leaving one school for the next. In his brief time at Eton, he was taught by Wilfrid Blunt, the brother of Anthony--art historian, traitor, and spy. Hodgkin himself taught, at art schools, although he is wary of the consequences. When I asked him recently if he enjoyed teaching, he answered quickly, "Yes, too much. That means burnout." At seventy-one, he is among the senior...
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