For Bernard Jacobson 1979

Editor: This is Howard Hodgkin's "For Bernard Jacobson", currently residing at the Tate. The jewel tones make me think of a darkened theatre, just before the curtain rises. What do you see in this piece? Curator: It's a memory palace, I think. Hodgkin called them "representational pictures of emotional situations". These aren't literal depictions, of course, but rather the lingering feelings, the color of a memory, distilled. Does that resonate with you? Editor: Absolutely! It's like trying to describe a feeling with color instead of words. Curator: Precisely. And the diptych form mirrors that sense of memory being both fragmented and a whole. It's quite beautiful, isn't it? I think Hodgkin would be pleased we saw that. Editor: It really is, it's a whole new level of emotional abstraction.