Previously published at wordsofwhitenoise.wordpress.com

‘The modern man I sing’ – goes Whitman’s famous dictum, and much of the work on offer in this thin slice of David Hockney’s early work sings something of a similar tune. Indeed, the notion of modernity – both in the sense of a shifting social landscape emergent in the mid to late 1960’s, (the period from which most of the work here dates), and the demands made on visual artists to negotiate the high modernism of the early twentieth century, informs much of the work made available here at the Walker Art Gallery until 16th March.