25.4.78 1978

John Hoyland made this oil on canvas, ‘25.4.78’, on that very day. The date in the title draws attention to the here-and-now of its creation. Abstract Expressionism was well-established by 1978. But Hoyland’s generation was also interested in the public role of art. Consider the work of art as a record of its own making. The thick impasto gestures of paint are not designed to represent anything beyond themselves. Look at how these slabs and blocks of colour are placed in dialogue with one another. Hoyland came from a working-class background in Sheffield. His education at the Royal Academy Schools – an institution with a deeply conservative reputation – was consciously rejected in favour of American abstraction. Hoyland saw his role as progressive; creating work that was free from old-fashioned academic constraints. We, as art historians, draw attention to the tension in Hoyland’s work between an interest in gesture and a desire to create a new kind of monumental public art. This invites further research into his motivations, the institutional contexts in which his work was shown, and the critical reception he received.