Richard Hawkins

The career and artistic development of Richard Hawkins (b. 1961) are difficult to categorize. This Los Angeles-based artist started out as a curator and writer, and did not work actively as an artist until the early 1990s. In his art he critically examines social, cultural and historical phenomena and then combines his findings with autobiographical elements. In this way he has created a disparate corpus of works which are nevertheless connected through internal references to topics such as gender, lust and homoerotica; everything from Roman sculptures, hermaphrodites, pop stars and Hollywood celebrities to male models and porn stars populate Hawkins’ decadent pictorial world.

Hawkin’s earliest works are collages (a medium he still works with). To create them, he leafed through magazines and tabloids, found glossy photos of young men and combined them to create powerful artworks charged with desire. Some of the motifs have post-it notes with inscriptions like 'Jealous' and 'Suffering pain'. In the late ‘90s Hawkins created the much-discussed Disembodied Zombies series – decapitated and bleeding heads of beautiful young men seen against polychrome backgrounds. These vibrantly coloured, shocking and yet alluring works might jog a memory of Salome and John the Baptist, but the effect seems more akin to symbolist precursors and horror genres.

In the 2000s, after creating a series of abstract pictures, Hawkins started working figuratively. For a time he explored his Indian roots. These caricatured motifs place him in a tradition with satirical American painters such as Reginald Marsh and Philip Evergood, but the visual vocabulary invokes painters like Philip Guston and Francis Picabia.

Since 2004 Hawkins has painted narrative scenes from the gay tourism industry in Southeast Asia, motifs he describes as 'hallucinations after an overdose of Viagra'. The work exhibited here, Peanut Gallery, Grand Opening (2006), is from this series. Inspired by Reginald Marsh’s scenes from 1920s burlesque shows, the painting depicts a gay bar scene in Thailand. Elderly Western men sit at the bar and ogle young boys who strut on an aquarium-like stage. The phrase 'peanut gallery' harkens back to the cheep seats in old vaudeville theatres, where the least cultivated members of the public sat. They would pester the actors, hurl verbal abuse and throw peanuts to express dissatisfaction. Hawkins’ strong colour palette and painting style are reminiscent of modern masters such as Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin, but the content ominously suggests paedophilia. After spending time in Thailand and studying the gay bar culture, Hawkins sought to express the intensity of its social scene. Who knows? – It may disappear, if Interpol succeeds in shutting it down.

Parallel to working with the theme of sex-tourism, Hawkins’ interest in manifestations of sexuality has led him to the theme of transvestites and hermaphrodites. Based on studies of sculptures from the late Roman era, the collage series Urbis Paganus can be interpreted as a tribute to sexual difference. Hawkins is an artist who explores his subjects thoroughly, but who nevertheless has a style too eclectic and subjective to be called ‘critical investigative art’. Even so, his works can be read as an ongoing project of self-analysis, and as a revolt against conservative social and cultural values. For this reason, it is natural to draw parallels between Richard Hawkins and artists such as David Hockney, Bjarne Melgaard and Martin Kippenberger.

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