In praise of the fastidious

David Hockney, at the Palace of Arts, offers more than might be expected, writes Nigel Ryan
Three snakes stretch horizontally across a white background, three bands of colour, the top blue, the middle pink and red, the bottom ochre. Only one of these snakes has a head, though it is enough to identify the two headless bands as something other than a decorative streak of coloured crayon. It is a playful image and not at all sinister: these are toy snakes, not quite stripped of every bit of snakey symbolism, but still rather more novelty draught excluder than sly serpent. They are unlikely to tempt anyone with an apple, though it would be unwise, perhaps, to find them too cuddly. And the same might be said for most of the images in Egyptian Journeys, the exhibition of works by David Hockney, currently showing at the Palace of Arts in the Opera House grounds, curated by Marco Livingstone and organised by the Islamic Art Society.
Egyptian Journeys may be a tad misleading as a title for this exhibition: the bulk of the works on show date from 1962, the year in which Hockney, then aged 26, was commissioned by The Sunday Times to travel to Egypt and record his impressions, the aim being to produce a kind of visual diary that could be reproduced in the paper's newly launched full-colour magazine supplement. These drawings are supplemented by the inclusion of the series of etchings Hockney produced, two years later, for an edition of selected poems by Cavafy, though in this instance the architectural settings, unobtrusive, proto-deco, a kind of Casablancan-lido, were based on Beirut from where, presumably, a couple of the drawings displayed alongside the etchings originate. The artist returned to Egypt in 1978, following twelve months work on settings for a production of The Magic Flute, but there is nothing included in the exhibition from this later visit.
Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor, the itinerary of Hockney's first visit, provide, then, the focus of this Egyptian journey, made by an artist who was already something of a celebrity in England, though not quite the venerable fixture of the international art scene that he has become. At the time he was a rising star: with R B Kitaj he would be credited with presiding over the emergence of pop art in Britain, lodging somehow seamlessly into nostalgic perceptions of the 1960s before finally escaping to California, swimming pools, and sun-tans. None of which is entirely fair, or accurate: such are the caricatures of those deemed somehow to represent their times.
From the perspective of the 21st century it is the classicising tendency of "Pop" art that emerges most forcefully, a function, perhaps, of it being so blithely ignored at the time. And what is most likely to impress the viewer at this exhibition is the austerity of a great many of the images: the publicity material provided for the exhibition talks of the sumptuousness of the drawings, a description the works themselves do little to support. What sumptuousness there is is meticulously rationed.
Indeed, the fastidious is one of Hockney's registers, and the one most in evidence here. Two Arab Boys walk -- down the street one must presume, though no indication is provided -- not quite hieratic, but extreme in its schema -- pencilled profile, pencilled half-profile, and green crayon for the stripes of one galabiya. View from the Nile Hilton displays an equally reductionist approach: green grass, a single car, and one building, presumably that currently occupied by the Cleopatra Hotel, and in the middle of the verdant traffic island the Egyptian flag with two tell-tale green stars.
The present -- i.e. the Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria of 1962 -- are ruthlessly ordered, subjected to the discipline and pictorial conventions of ancient art, while the ancient is allowed a little more leeway. Thus, in a series of etchings and drawings depicting marriage, it is the female figure, Horus-eyed, head-dressed, and in ancient costume, that is allowed a degree of singularity while the groom, who appears initially with details of his modern dress -- jacket, collar and tie -- apparent, is gradually reduced to a blocked outline devoid of detail. In one staging point of the transformation she reclines on a comfortably upholstered divan while he becomes a nose and an eye and nothing more.
The same process occurs in Rehotpe and his Wife Nefret Sat in a Glass Cage, the cage in question being a display case in, presumably, the Egyptian Museum. The couple, in Hockney's depiction, appears in urgent need of a little marriage counselling.
In the majority of drawings suggestions of place remain minimal, often no more than a scrap of Arabic writing, a garage sign -- Shell -- adorning an otherwise blank façade. The calligraphic interest reaches a high point in a small sketch of a book of matches lying on a table, the book inscribed with the legend "these matches belong to David Hockney." And when the details of place, of setting, are foregrounded as subject, as in the Luxor Hotel -- the one image to which the description sumptuous can reasonably be applied -- the inhabitants of the hotel, slumped in wicker chairs on a verandah overlooking a palm-filled garden, slide anonymously into the shade they have undoubtedly been seeking and more or less disappear. Similarly, the three drawings based on Mr Milo's House in Cairo: as upholstery, the accessories of hospitality -- tea pot, cups, trays -- become defined, so the host, or guest, for the nature of the figure is indeterminate, loses definition.
Hockney's Cavafy illustrations are perhaps the best- known images included in the exhibition, thin, black and white etchings, two including portraits of the poet, others illustrations to specific poems. Their extreme economy, their reliance on the ability of severely reduced line to suggest the tentative nature of the encounters Cavafy describes while simultaneously delineating the empty spaces that lend those encounters their significance weight, could not be better judged. Cavafy, a man whose debauchery could never have been anything but fastidious, finds an ideal illustrator. Forget the sumptuous, this is where it's at. And as far as this gallery space is concerned, it has seldom been better filled.
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