Sur la Terrasse, David Hockney (1971)
The liminal period between day and evening, and between love and heartbreak
Few images capture the sweetness of love and impermanence of summer like “Sur la Terrasse” painted by David Hockney in 1971 of his then lover and muse, Peter Schlesinger, in Morocco before their relationship ended.
In comparison to most Hockney paintings, the colours are muted and soft conveying the hazy eyes of a lover’s gaze. The light and shadows exquisitely set the late afternoon hour, the liminal, melancholic period between day and evening. The observer’s adoration for the subject radiates off the canvas, yet one is left to wonder if the man portrayed is coming or going.
Hockney’s use of colour expertly illustrates the theories articulated in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art“, by Wassily Kandinsky decades earlier. The green tree tops set a peaceful and serene backdrop. Green, Kandinsky said, is “the most restful colour there is“ and has the characteristics of equanimity and spirituality, or “the placid tones of a violin“. One senses the breeze, smells the bougainvillea, and hears the soft notes in the air.
By contrast, the yellow door in the foreground and the blue shadows on the terrace floor create subtle opposing forces. Yellow pulls us in step with the loving onlooker, whilst the blue shadows on the terrace floor hold space away from the subject leaving us with a sense of separation between the two men.
Kandinsky also wrote at length that an artist must choose the subject of his art wisely, for no masterful technique could convey inner feeling and meaning if the subject chosen did not stir something inside them. To quote Kandinsky, “We may go as far as the artist is able to carry his emotion, and once more we see how immense is the need for true emotion.”
Hockney’s painting illustrates appreciation for a bittersweet moment, of a love that is slipping away but not yet lost. It freezes the onlooker on the unbearable knife-edge between electrifying love and unknowable heartbreak. To hold this fragile moment in space and time can only be accomplished by someone held steady by the undercurrent of their spirit; one who is prepared for any path the universe has in mind for them.
To Hum is to live within the moment, without need to control or determine the outcome. To appreciate a moment so precious even a soft exhale can shift the vibration in the air and cause it to float away on the wind, gone forever.