“When artists talk about their work, it’s often total bullshit,” says Michael Lindsay-Hogg, whose exhibition “Talking Pictures” opens today at Hudson Hall, in upstate New York where he lives, and features 85 paintings. “But,” he continues, “the organization of little cubes, or the distortion of the head, or whatever, shows me a kind of order—and that helps my mood, because chaos has been controlled.”
Lindsay-Hogg, now 83, forged a career from chaos. After dropping out of Oxford in 1960, he found his way to directing, beginning in 1965 with the British music show Ready Steady Go! “When I worked with the Rolling Stones, I wanted to embrace the rock ’n’ roll chaos. Most of the shows at the time were very conventional—wide shots, over-the-shoulders, close-ups. I thought, ‘There’s a whole other way of doing this,’ and wanted to get in the chaos. I wanted to be like one of those planes that tracks storms.”