Collaborating with chaos

John Hoyland dislikes being called ‘one of Britain’s leading abstract painters’. He thinks it’s lazy thinking, and over-reliance on labelling. ‘They don’t say: “Lucian Freud, leading figurative painter” — he’s just a painter. Or “Francis Bacon, leading melodramatist”.’ Mention of Bacon sends him off on a tangent, one of the digressions that make Hoyland’s conversation — along with his forthright opinions — so rewarding and enjoyable. ‘I look at Bacon’s paintings and instead of being moved by them they make me want to laugh. They’re supposed to be horrible and moving and frightening, but they’re so shrill and so theatrical. I like drama in music or painting, but not melodrama.’ And having dismissed one of the most expensive and sought-after of modern British artists, he leans back and grins. Hoyland is not too keen on auction rooms and the prices they generate. His own Sixties’ work is currently a focus of buyers’ attention, generating auction records, and he finds it rather annoying.