Another post, another obituary. But this time it is a celebration of a life well lived—David Hockney did the thing he loved to do most, paint, to the very end. Not a bad way to go. He was 88, and his health had been failing for some time.
David Hockney was born in 1939 into a working-class family in the small industrial city of Bradford, Yorkshire, one of five children. His father was a self-employed restorer of baby carriages and a crusader against nuclear arms. His mother, Laura, to whom he was especially close, was a frequent subject of his portraits. David Hockney maintained close ties to his parents, returning yearly to spend Christmas with them until the end of their lives.
Image © Tate / My Parents © David Hockney 1977
Conservative in his art, since it was figurative and narrative in an era when abstraction was favoured, he was nevertheless avant-garde as one of the first widely popular artists of his time to make work with undisguised gay content.
Image © Christie’s / Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figurines) ⓒ David Hockney, 1972
Hockney travelled widely in search of inspiration and spent many years in America, in New York and especially Los Angeles, where he made a lot of his best-known paintings, many including images of swimming pools. These identified him as the quintessential artist of Southern California’s nouveau riche leisure life.
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968. Acrylic on canvas, 212 x 303.5 cm. Private collection. © David Hockney
He painted the people around him, his family, lovers and friends, and made a series of evocative double portraits (the one above is a particularly favourite of mine.) He also painted vivid landscapes, some huge, filled with light and colour.
Hockney was a visually striking man, with a high-color wardrobe of plaid suits, striped soccer jerseys and mismatched colored socks, owlish glasses and bleached blond hair. A gregarious personality, he surrounded himself with people and made many friends, until late in life, when deafness isolated him slightly. He compensated by surrounding himself with his beloved pet dachshunds.
Later on he used technology in his art, making collages of photographs and iPad art. In fact during his long career he tried his hand at many different techniques, such as theatre sets and stained glass windows. He loved to experiment with various methods. Nevertheless, his appetite for technology was unexpected because, as The Washington Post put it: “There is no living art star less in need of a machine… Hockney can draw water. Hockney can draw smog. He can draw the bleaching sunlight… in Los Angeles. He can draw the chilling damp of Bradford… He can draw the glow of friendship.”
Letters from Athens