01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 26, 2006

BY BILL VAN SICLEN
Journal Arts Writer

BOSTON -- Say the name "David Hockney" and most art lovers immediately picture a swimming pool. And not just any swimming pool, but one of those perfect southern California pools -- the ones with the glistening blue-green water edged with white concrete and framed by tall, swaying palms.

Though born and raised in England, Hockney has lived in Los Angeles since the late 1960s. Over the years, he's depicted California's plush, pool-centered lifestyle so often and so well that the words "Hockney" and "pool" are practically synonymous. He is, without too much exaggeration, the Picasso of pools.

But Hockney has other interests, too. He is, for example, a talented painter of landscapes and still lifes, as well as an accomplished portraitist.

How accomplished? That's the question posed by a "David Hockney: Portraits," a major survey of Hockney's portrait-making efforts opening today at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Organized by the MFA and London's National Portrait Gallery, with help from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the show features more than 150 prints, paintings, drawings and other works.

Among them are some of Hockney's best-known paintings, including his now-iconic portrait of British fashion designers Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell posing with their cat, Percy. (Last year, when the BBC held a contest to pick the "10 Greatest" paintings in England, Hockney's Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy was the only work by a living artist to make the list.)

Other highlights include A Rake's Progress, a series of etchings inspired by Hockney's first trip to New York City in 1961, and My Parents, a sensitive 1977 portrait of his mother and father. (Question: When was the last time a contemporary artist did a sensitive painting of his or her parents?)

The show, which fills the MFA's spacious Gund Gallery, also offers a soup-to-nuts overview of Hockney's artistic development.

The show's earliest canvas, a small dark-toned portrait of his father, was painted in 1955. At the time, Hockney was 18 and still living at home in Bradford, an industrial city in the northwest of England. The show's most recent works, including a series of portraits of Hockney's "posse" of West Coast friends and collectors, were completed last year.

In between, the show follows Hockney as he works his way through often-idiosyncratic permutations of Pop Art, Cubism and even Old Master portraiture. There are also sections devoted to Hockney's use of photography, including his now-famous Polaroid grids and collages.

There's even a "pool painting" -- 1966's Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool -- in which a hunky male nude stands thigh-deep in one of Hockney's trademark swimming pools. Besides being a terrific painting, it's a reminder that the 68-year-old Hockney was one of the first artists to openly express his homosexuality through his art.

Timeless compositions

So how do Hockney's portraits stack up?

Pretty well, actually. The paintings, especially some of the larger double portraits, have a classical poise and balance that belies their contemporary subject matter. The clothes, houses and people may be modern, but the compositions themselves feel timeless.

(After Boston, the show will travel to Los Angeles and then on to London's National Portrait Gallery, home to the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Reynolds and Gainsborough. My guess is that Hockey's portraits will look right at home alongside these Old Masters.)

Hockney is also an outstanding draftsman, a skill underscored by the show's large selection of drawings in pencil, charcoal and pen and ink. His colored pencil drawings of the elfin-faced Birtwell, a longtime friend and muse, are worth the price of admission on their own.

If Hockney has a weakness, it's a tendency to flog certain pet ideas and enthusiasms long after they've gone stale.

Hockney's fascination with Picasso and Cubism, for example, has inspired some of his best work, including Artist and Model, a wonderful 1973 etching in which a naked Hockney and clothed Picasso face off over a kitchen table. At once playful and admiring, it captures the tangle of emotions -- dread, worship, envy -- that young artists often feel toward their artistic elders.

Less successful are some of Hockney's later forays into Cubist territory.

A group of 1984 drawings, including a portrait of British writer Christopher Isherwood, are so thoroughly disjointed that they border on the grotesque. Hockney's widely publicized experiments with the camera obscura, a kind of Renaissance-era Etch-A-Sketch, have also had mixed results.

Decent, honest, hard-working

Fortunately, it's almost impossible to dislike Hockney. Indeed, he comes across as a fundamentally decent, honest, hard-working artist, someone who clearly enjoys the trappings of success but hasn't been spoiled by them.

What's more, Hockney seems genuinely fond of the people in his life. In fact, he rarely accepts private commissions, preferring instead to work with a close-knit group of family, friends, lovers and fellow artists.

As a result, "David Hockney: Portraits" often feels like a family affair, with many of the same faces popping up over and over again.

The show's curators -- Sarah Howgate of the National Gallery and Barbara Stern Shapiro of the MFA -- highlight this aspect of Hockney's work right at the start. As visitors enter the exhibit, they're surrounded by images of Hockney's real-life family, including portraits of his father, mother and brother.

Many of these works date from the mid-1950s, when Hockney was enrolled at the local Bradford School of Art. They reveal a young artist who, even in his teens, displayed a precocious talent for both drawing and portraiture.

Surprisingly, Hockney continued to paint and sketch his parents long after he'd become an art-world celebrity. The presence of works such as Mother, Bradford, 19 Feb. 1978, a small ink drawing done on the day of his father's funeral, and My Parents, a loving, if gently humorous double portrait from 1977, gives his work a poignancy rare in contemporary art.

Extended 'family'

Though family portraits continue to crop up from time to time, the balance of the show is devoted to Hockney's extended "family" of friends, lovers, art dealers and collectors.

The show's centerpiece, both literally and symbolically, is a section dominated by three large double portraits, each depicting people who've played important roles in Hockney's life.

The earliest -- painted in 1968, shortly after Hockney's move to California -- shows Los Angeles collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman surrounded by objects from their collection. As in many of Hockney's double portraits, the figures are placed far apart, though whether this is meant as a comment on their relationship or merely a compositional device is hard to tell.

In any case, the young Hockney can't resist poking fun at the Weismans, giving Fred Weisman a clenched fist and tautly static pose that echo a nearby stone sculpture. Marcia Weisman's toothy smile, meanwhile, is repeated in the faces on a Northwest Indian totem pole in the background.

Another Hockney favorite is former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler. An early supporter of Hockney's, Geldzahler, who died in 1994, appears in a number of works, including a 1969 portrait with his then-partner Christopher Scott, as well as several drawings.

Though large-scale paintings such as Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott and Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy are clearly the stars of the show, viewers shouldn't overlook Hockney's smaller works. Indeed, while his larger paintings can sometimes seem a bit stiff and schematic, his prints and drawings radiate a lively, engaging intelligence.

Among these more intimate works, look for Hockney's affectionate portraits of Pop artist Andy Warhol (looking uncharacteristically pensive in a colored-pencil drawing from 1974), actor Dennis Hopper (who appears in a series of small Cubist-inspired photographs) and poet W.H. Auden (whose famously grizzled visage suggests a kind of human-size Shar-Pei).

In these smaller works, as much as his larger paintings, Hockney demonstrates the full range of skills -- a keen eye for detail, psychological acumen, artistic talent -- that all great portraitists must possess. Clearly, he does more than just pools.

"David Hockney: Portraits" continues through May 14 at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston. Exhibition hours: Mon.-Tues. and Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. and Wed.-Fri. 10 a.m.-9:45 p.m. Admission: adults $22, students and seniors $20, children 7-17 $7.50, under 7 free. (Note: prices include general museum admission and exhibit admission.)

For more information, call (617) 267-9300 or visit www.mfa.org.

bvansicl@projo.com / (401) 277-7421