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1990
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Exhibition Howard Hodgkin: Small Paintings, organised by the British Council.
London Underground LTD commissions Hodgkin to paint Highgate Ponds, an image reproduced as a poster.
Finishes one of his most monumental paintings, Rain, started in 1985 and purchased by the Tate Gallery. “When I finished the picture,” Hodgkin remembers, “I came out of my studio thinking nothing could ever be quite the same again.” The Independent Magazine, 16 February 1991
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1991
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Creates a set of hand-coloured engravings for The Way We Live Now, a book created in collaboration with Susan Sontag chronicling a group of New Yorkers dealing with a friend’s terminal illness. All royalties donated to AIDS charities.
The exhibition Indian Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Howard Hodgkin opens at the Arthur M Sackler Gallery in Washington DC.
Begins a series of three paintings in memory of the late Max Gordon, a British architect and friend of Hodgkin .
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1992
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Awarded Knighthood. Later speaks somewhat regretfully about his decision to accept the title: “I thought to hell with it. I very nearly didn’t accept it but then I thought it was taking it too seriously not to.’ ‘The Life Interview, The Observer Magazine, 10 July 1994)
Exhibition Howard Hodgkin: Seven Small Pictures at the British School in Rome.
Worked with architect Charles Correa to create a mural for the headquarters of the British Council in New Delhi. Entirely in black stone on white marble, the form of the mural is a tree and the shadows cast by its leaves.
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1993
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Exhibition at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London—his first one-man show in Britain for five years.
In interviews Hodgkin grows wary of being asked about the subject matter and titles of his work:
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“[N]obody seems to be able to respond to art without a gush of words….I am happy for people to talk about my pictures; but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself ….I want people to look at my pictures as pictures, as things.”
quoted in Antony Peattie in Howard Hodgkin, Anthony D’Offay Gallery, London, 1993
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1994
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Andrew Graham-Dixon writes the first monograph on Hodgkin.
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1995-6
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Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1975-1995 organised by the Modern Art Museum
of Fort Worth, Texas. The 38 works tour to New York, Düsseldorf and London. , The show confirms Hodgkin’s position as an artist of international standing.
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1996
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Creates a set of hand-coloured etchings inspired by Julian Barnes’s short story, Evermore. The collaboration is published as an artist’s book.
Second appearance on the South Bank Show. “Painting is all I know how to do,” Hodgkin says.
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1997
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Awarded Shakespeare Prize. Since 1935, the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, has presented the prize annually to a British citizen for outstanding contribution to the cultural heritage of Europe.
Receives an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Birmingham.
Participates in ‘Mind’s Eye,’ a series of talks with art critic William Feaver. The aim is for subjects to choose works of art that have influenced them; Hodgkin elects to speak about Mondrian as well as Walter Sickert, JE Liotard, Henri Matisse and Edgar Degas.
Collaborates with the Mark Morris Dance Group on stage designs for Rhymes with Silver, and again for Kolam in 2002.
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1998
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Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York.
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1999
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Appointed Honorary Fellow of the London Institute.
Exhibition at Anthony d’Offay Gallery—the artist’s first commercial show in London for six years.
Creates a painting which is photographically enlarged 100 times for a mural outside the drum of the new Imax theatre in Waterloo.
Hodgkin’s design, New Worlds, appears on a Royal Mail 64 pence stamp.
Designs stage set for the Smithsonian Institute’s production of Gustav Holst’s Savitri
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2000
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Awarded Honorary Doctorate by the University of Oxford.
Participates in the National Gallery of London exhibition Encounters, for which artists are asked to create pieces based on the gallery’s collection. Hodgkin paints an immense version of Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières
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2001
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Ten of Hodkgin’s works—including The Last Time I Saw Paris, 1988-91 and Chez Max, 1996-97—are hung alongside old master paintings in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.
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“There are only 10 pictures in this show, but each one carries its own weight, and each is saying and doing something different. It's an amazing achievement.” (Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2001)
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In a video produced by Illuminations in connection with the Dulwich exhibition, Hodgkin states that an artist must have “a willingness to be naked in front of art. Ambition is far more important than talent.”
Receives an Honorary Doctorate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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2002
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Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, mounts an exhibition in celebration of Hodgkin’s 70th birthday. The 20 works include some of his largest-ever pictures, such as Americana, 1999-2001.
Hodgkin has spoken of his struggle with painting large pictures, noting that the traditional techniques of illusionism and fixed perspective that he uses in his smaller pictures do not work on a large scale.
In a controversial exhibition, the Royal Academy allows twenty commercial galleries to display their choice of artwork in The Galleries Show. The Gagosian Gallery exhibits eight of Hodgkin’s small works.
The Peter Pears Gallery in Aldeburgh, England, holds an exhibition of Hodgkin’s stage set designs. Despite the display, Hodgkin considers his theatre designs to be connected to specific performances, existing as part of a greater production with costumes, lighting and audiences rather than autonomous works of art.
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2003
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Made a Companion of Honour for "services to art" in the 2003 New Year Honours.
Publication of Howard Hodgkin Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Liesbeth Heenk.
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2004
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Exhibition of new paintings at the Gagosian Gallery, Chelsea, New York.
The catalogue includes a contribution, ‘Words for H.H.’ by Hodgkin’s friend, writer Julian Barnes.
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“When travelling with HH, he and I have a running joke. Occasionally, sitting in a bar, overlooking a piazza, relaxing in a restaurant, he will say, with a delivery poised between self-satire and true contentment, “I feel a picture coming on.” I ritually reply, “I feel a novel coming on.” He means it more than I do (well, I never mean it), and I often wonder what is going through his head at these moments....when he says he feels a picture coming on, he seems to be looking differently; the moment is digestive, ruminant. And I know he will remember everything—or rather, everything he needs.” (Julian Barnes, in Howard Hodgkin, Gagosian Gallery, 2003)
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2006
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Retrospective exhibition held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Tate Britain, London; and El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
Designs sets for the Mark Morris Dance Group’s new work ‘Mozart Dances,’ to be premiered in August at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, as part of the Mostly Mozart festival. The production will travel to Vienna and will reach London’s Barbican Centre in summer 2007.
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