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\n\tDavid Hockney, one of the 20th century\u2019s most famous artists, best-known for his depictions of the sunny glitz of 1960s Los Angeles, has died at age 88. His publicist, Erica Bolton, confirmed he \u201cpassed away peacefully\u201d at home in London on Thursday, June 11, just one month away from his 89th birthday.<\/p>\n
\n\tHockney is one of contemporary art\u2019s most influential and immediately recognizable figures in his signature cap, round glasses, and colorful, often checkered attire. Above all, he stands apart as one of the few artists in the last century to have captured the imaginations of both a wider public, as well as the art world\u2019s tougher-to-crack critics and gatekeepers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOver six decades of painting, drawing, and printmaking, he remained unconcerned with contemporary art trends. He continued painting the subjects he loved right up until near the end of his life, including people and places he encountered over the years spent living in London, Los Angeles, East Yorkshire, and Normandy, to name a few.\u00a0Speaking to the\u00a0Smithsonian Archives of American Art\u00a0in 1984, Hockney explained that his pictures aim to mirror how memory actually works\u2014a series of subjective experiences that together make a life. \u201cThe point is, your body moves,\u201d he said, comparing his exuberant landscapes to Chinese scroll paintings, which unfold through time as viewers walk alongside them, absorbing their many viewpoints.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe viewer gets a body back in the end,\u201d Hockney said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAs news of Hockney\u2019s death spread, tributes poured in from leading figures in the British art world and beyond, among them UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who paid tribute in a statement Friday morning.<\/p>\n
\n\tAlex Farquharson, director of London\u2019s Tate Britain, described Hockney in a statement to the BBC<\/em> as \u201ccompletely and courageously himself, both in his work and in life. He taught us the joy of looking, of seeing things the rest of us failed to notice\u2014his witty and sharp observations a constant presence both in his work and in person.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTate Britain is set to mount a major exhibition of Hockney\u2019s work next year, alongside a multimedia installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Tate said it would collaborate with the artist\u2019s team to ensure both projects proceed as planned.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe loss to the art world is immense,\u201d Farquharson added. \u201cDavid\u2019s passing brings to a close an extraordinary body of work characterized by reinvention.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDavid Hockney was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, on July 9, 1937, the fourth of five children in what he once described as a \u201cradical working-class family.\u201d By his own account, it was an encouraging upbringing: he developed his artistic talents from a young age and, with his parents\u2019 blessing, went on to study at Bradford College of Art. According to the David Hockney Foundation, his first public success came in 1957, when Portrait of My Father<\/em> sold for \u00a310 at the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition in Leeds. Hockney later recalled asking his father for permission to part with the painting, since Kenneth Hockney had purchased the canvas. His father replied, \u201cYou can do another.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLike his father, who had been a conscientious objector during World War II, Hockney registered as a conscientious objector during his National Service and worked as a hospital orderly from 1957 to 1959. By the early \u201960s, he was establishing himself as a British Pop artist of uncommon talent and nonconformist sensibility. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen I was at the Royal College, homosexuality was illegal, but I wasn\u2019t going to be intimidated by that,\u201d Hockney told Tate in 2017. Unusually for an artist of his generation, he began referencing his sexual identity in painting while still attending college, despite homosexuality remaining illegal in England until 1967. His 1961 painting We Two Boys Together Clinging<\/em> borrowed its title from a poem by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass. <\/em>Whitman, one of the hallowed names of American letters, has long been associated with expressions of queer desire. <\/p>\n \n\tLater in life, Hockney described We Two Boys Together Clinging<\/em> as \u201cpartly propaganda\u201d for homosexuality, arguing that it was a subject that \u201chadn\u2019t been propagandized\u201d in broader culture at the time. Around the same period, he produced early Los Angeles works such as Domestic Scene, Los Angeles<\/em> (1963), which depict queer domestic life with a rare, quiet intimacy.<\/p>\n \n\tPerhaps the enduring image of Hockney in the popular imagination is his sun-drenched paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools, alongside accounts of the art-world figures he socialized with in the city, including Andy Warhol and filmmaker Dennis Hopper. <\/p>\n A Bigger Splash<\/em> (1967), the most famous of his pool paintings, shows a yellow diving board jutting into a clear blue water, its serene surface disrupted by a dive moments earlier. The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Tate Britain, often free-of-charge to view.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen you photograph a splash, you\u2019re freezing a moment and it becomes something else,\u201d Hockney told the Tate, adding that \u201ca splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOther works in the swimming-pool series have commanded millions at auction, most notably Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)<\/em> (1972), which shows one figure standing at the pool\u2019s edge as another swims beneath the surface. The painting sold at Christie\u2019s in 2018 for $90.3 million, then a record for the most expensive work by a living artist at auction.<\/p>\n \n\tHockney painted some of his most iconic works during this period, including depictions of the wealthy inhabitants of these luxurious Los Angeles homes, most notably American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman)<\/em> (1968), a double portrait showing Fred in a suit and Marcia in a pink bathrobe in the sculpture garden of their glass residence. The composition features several works from their collection, including outdoor and indoor sculptures.<\/p>\n \n\tA restless innovator, Hockney expanded his practice in later life to include extensive work on the iPad, which he described as \u201cjust another way of drawing.\u201d The tablet offered an ease of work that matched his prolific pace: \u201cYou can work in the morning, print it out, and put it on the wall in the afternoon,\u201d he added. He drew en plein air in a digital extension of Impressionist practice, designed opera sets and stage environments, and produced etchings, lithographs, photographs, and stained glass.<\/p>\n \n\tJust nine months ago, his largest exhibition of his work closed at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. The more than 400-work survey included his iPad paintings, portraits\u2014long focused on people within his personal circle\u2014and works from earlier periods. During the COVID-19 lockdown in Normandy, he turned to the iPad, which allowed him to make what ARTnews<\/em> described as \u201cluminous compositions in juxtaposed flat tints, but with pop accents, to capture the effects of light and climatic changes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn that show, one recent self-portrait depicts him at work in a garden. On his jacket lapel is a sticker reading \u201cEnd Bossiness Soon,\u201d a personal slogan Hockney often repeated in interviews, particularly in defense of his smoking. \u201cI smoke for my mental health,\u201d he told the BBC<\/em> in 2004.<\/p>\n \n\tHe remained just as steadfast in his belief in the centrality of drawing\u2014for himself and for all artists. \u201cDrawing,\u201d he said, \u201cis the basis of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe is survived by his partner Jean-Pierre Goncalves de Lima, two brothers, Phillip and John, and their children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/feature\/david-hockney-dead-at-88-1234789018\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/GettyImages-1040616206.jpg?w=1024″] David Hockney, one of the 20th century\u2019s most famous artists, best-known for his depictions of the sunny glitz of 1960s Los Angeles, has died at age 88. His publicist, Erica Bolton, confirmed he \u201cpassed away peacefully\u201d at home in London on Thursday, June 11, just one month away from his 89th birthday. 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