The title of Clive Hodgson’s recent exhibition “Signed Paintings” was doubly significant: On the one hand, all the works were literally marked by the painter with his name, and on the other, as in the work of Robert Ryman, Hodgson’s moniker here became simultaneously a decorative emblem, a formal element, and a mark of authorization. In the
late 1980s, having decided that viewers were not seeing his paintings as such but instead interpreting the actions of his depicted figures, Hodgson abandoned the figuration for which he was gaining renown and returned to abstraction. His works are neither