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David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...

David Hockney.
Retrieved 13 September 2008.
Hockney has owned residences and studios in
Bridlington Bridlington is a coastal town and a civil parish on the Holderness Coast of the North Sea in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is about north of Hull and east of York. The Gypsey Race enters the North Sea at its harbour. The 2011 ...
, and London, as well as two residences in California, where he has lived intermittently since 1964: one in the
Hollywood Hills The Hollywood Hills are a residential neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Geography The Hollywood Hills straddle the Cahuenga Pass within the Santa Monica Mountains. The neighborhood touches Studio City, Un ...
, one in Malibu, and an office and archives on
Santa Monica Boulevard Santa Monica Boulevard is a major west–east thoroughfare in Los Angeles County. It runs from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean to Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Junction in Los Angeles. It passes through Beverly Hills and West Ho ...
in
West Hollywood West Hollywood is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Incorporated in 1984, it is home to the Sunset Strip. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, its population was 35,757. It is considered one of the most prominent gay villages ...
, California. On 15 November 2018, Hockney's 1972 work ''
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) ''Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)'' is a large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting by British artist David Hockney, completed in May 1972. It measures , and depicts two figures: one swimming underwater and one clothed male figur ...
'' sold at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...
auction house in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction. This broke the previous record, set by the 2013 sale of
Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-Surface fi ...
' ''Balloon Dog (Orange)'' for $58.4 million. Hockney held this record until 15 May 2019 when Koons reclaimed the honour selling his ''
Rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit sp ...
'' for more than $91 million at Christie's in New York.


Early life and education

David Hockney was born in
Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...
,
West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...
, England, to Laura and Kenneth Hockney, a
conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...
in the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, the fourth of five children. He was educated at Wellington Primary School,
Bradford Grammar School Bradford Grammar School (BGS) is a co-educational independent day school located in Frizinghall, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Entrance is by examination, except for the sixth form, where admission is based on GCSE results. The school gi ...
,
Bradford College Bradford College is a further and higher education college in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, with approximately 25,000 students. The college offers a range of full and part-time courses from introductory level through to postgraduate l ...
of Art (where his teachers included
Frank Lisle Frank Lisle (1916–1986) was a British painter and art teacher, who numbered a young David Hockney among his pupils when he was Head of Art at Bradford College of Art. He was principal of Jacob Kramer College from 1970 to 1977. Among his p ...
and his fellow students included Derek Boshier,
Pauline Boty Pauline Boty (6 March 1938 – 1 July 1966) was a British painter and co-founder of the 1960s' British Pop art movement of which she was the only acknowledged female member. Boty's paintings and collages often demonstrate a joy in self-assured ...
, Norman Stevens, David Oxtoby and John Loker) and the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It ...
in London, where he met R. B. Kitaj. While there, Hockney said he felt at home and took pride in his work. At the Royal College of Art, Hockney featured in the exhibition '' Young Contemporaries'' – alongside Peter Blake – that announced the arrival of British Pop art. He was associated with the movement, but his early works display
expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...
elements, similar to some works by
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
. When the RCA said it would not let him graduate if he did not complete an assignment of a life drawing of a live model in 1962, Hockney painted ''Life Painting for a Diploma'' in protest. He had refused to write an essay required for the final examination, saying he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognizing his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded the diploma. After leaving the RCA, he taught at
Maidstone College of Art The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD, often ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone Col ...
for a short time. He taught at the University of Iowa in 1964. Hockney also taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1965. Then taught at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1966-1967, followed by the University of California, Berkeley in 1967.


Career

In 1964, Hockney moved to
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, where he was inspired to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new
acrylic Acrylic may refer to: Chemicals and materials * Acrylic acid, the simplest acrylic compound * Acrylate polymer, a group of polymers (plastics) noted for transparency and elasticity * Acrylic resin, a group of related thermoplastic or thermosett ...
medium using vibrant colours. He lived back and forth among Los Angeles, London, and Paris in the late 1960s to 1970s. In 1974 he began a decade-long personal relationship with Gregory Evans who moved with him to the US in 1976 and as of 2019 remains a business partner. In 1978 he rented a house in the
Hollywood Hills The Hollywood Hills are a residential neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Geography The Hollywood Hills straddle the Cahuenga Pass within the Santa Monica Mountains. The neighborhood touches Studio City, Un ...
, and later bought and expanded it to include his studio. He also owned a 1,643-square-foot beach house at 21039 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, which he sold in 1999 for around $1.5 million. In the 1990s, Hockney returned more frequently to Yorkshire, usually every three months, to visit his mother who died in 1999. Until 1997, he rarely stayed for more than two weeks, when his friend Jonathan Silver who was terminally ill encouraged him to capture the local surroundings. He did this at first with paintings based on memory, some from his boyhood. In 1998, he completed the painting of the
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
landmark, Garrowby Hill. Hockney returned to Yorkshire for longer and longer stays, and by 2003 was painting the countryside
en plein air ''En plein air'' (; French for 'outdoors'), or ''plein air'' painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein air' painting ...
in both oils and watercolour. He set up residence and studio in a converted bed and breakfast, in the seaside town of
Bridlington Bridlington is a coastal town and a civil parish on the Holderness Coast of the North Sea in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is about north of Hull and east of York. The Gypsey Race enters the North Sea at its harbour. The 2011 ...
, about from where he was born. The oil paintings he produced after 2005 were influenced by his intensive studies in watercolour, a series titled ''Midsummer: East Yorkshire'' (2003–2004).David Hockney: Paintings 2006–2009, 29 October – 24 December 2009
Pace Gallery The Pace Gallery is an American contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong ...
, New York.
He created paintings made of multiple smaller canvases—two to fifty—placed together. To help him visualise work at that scale, he used digital photographic reproductions to study the day's work. In spring 2019 Hockney stayed at La Grande Cour, a farmhouse and studio in
Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
, during the global
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
.


Work

Hockney has experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolours, photography, and many other media including a fax machine, paper pulp, computer applications and iPad drawing programs. The subject matter of interest ranges from still lifes to landscapes,
portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this ...
s of friends, his dogs, and stage designs for the
Royal Court Theatre The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England ...
,
Glyndebourne Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hun ...
, and the
Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is opera ...
in New York City.


Portraits

Hockney has always returned to painting portraits throughout his career. From 1968, and for the next few years, he painted portraits and double portraits of friends, lovers, and relatives just under life-size in a realistic style that adroitly captured the likenesses of his subjects. Hockney has repeatedly been drawn to the same subjects – his family, employees, artists Mo McDermott and Maurice Payne, various writers he has known, fashion designers
Celia Birtwell Celia Birtwell, CBE (born 1941), is a British textile designer and fashion designer, known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which are influenced by Picasso and Matisse, and the classical world. She was well known for her ...
and Ossie Clark ('' Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy'', 1970–71), curator
Henry Geldzahler Henry Geldzahler (July 9, 1935 – August 16, 1994) was a Belgian-born American curator of contemporary art in the late 20th century, as well as a historian and critic of modern art. He is best known for his work at the Metropolitan Museum ...
, art dealer
Nicholas Wilder Nicholas Walter George Wilder (1937May 12, 1989) was an American art dealer and owner of an eponymous contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. He later closed his gallery, returned to his native New York, and developed a ...
, George Lawson and his ballet dancer lover,
Wayne Sleep Wayne Philip Colin Sleep (born 17 July 1948) is a British dancer, director, choreographer, and actor who appeared on the BBC series '' The Real Marigold on Tour'' and ITV's '' The Real Full Monty''. Early life Sleep was born in Plymouth, D ...
, and also his romantic interests throughout the years, including Peter Schlesinger and Gregory Evans. Perhaps more than all of these, Hockney has turned to his own figure year after year, creating over 300 self-portraits. From 1999 to 2001 Hockney used a
camera lucida A ''camera lucida'' is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopists. The ''camera lucida'' performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist s ...
for his research into art history as well as his own work in the studio. He created over 200 drawings of friends, family, and himself using this antique lens-based device. In 2016, the
Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
exhibited Hockney's series entitled ''82 Portraits and 1 Still-life'' which traveled to
Ca' Pesaro The Ca' Pesaro is a Baroque marble palace turned art museum, facing the Grand Canal of Venice, Italy. Today it is one of the 11 museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia system. The building was originally designed by Baldassarre Lo ...
in Venice, Italy, and the
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Sp ...
, in 2017 and to the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...
in 2018. Hockney calls the paintings started in 2013 "twenty-hour exposures" because each sitting took six to seven hours on three consecutive days.


Printmaking

Hockney experimented with printmaking as early as a lithograph ''Self-Portrait'' in 1954 and worked in etchings during his time at RCA.Beaumont-Jones, Julia
"The Rake's Progress,"
''Art in Print'', Vol. 4 No. 4 (November–December 2014).
In 1965, the print workshop
Gemini G.E.L. Gemini G.E.L., formally Gemini Ltd., is an artists‘ workshop, exhibition space, and publisher of limited edition prints and sculptures, located at 8365 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California. History Gemini Ltd. was founded in 1965 by mast ...
approached him to create a series of lithographs with a Los Angeles theme. Hockney responded by creating ''The Hollywood Collection'', a series of lithographs recreating the art collection of a Hollywood star, each piece depicting an imagined work of art within a frame. Hockney went on to produce many other portfolios with Gemini G.E.L. including ''Friends, The Weather Series,'' and ''Some New Prints''. During the 1960s he produced several series of prints he thought of as 'graphic tales', including ''A Rake’s Progress'' (1961–63) after Hogarth, ''Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy'' (1966) and ''Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm'' (1969). In 1973 Hockney began a fruitful collaboration with
Aldo Crommelynck Aldo Crommelynck (26 December 1931 – 22 December 2008) was a Belgian master printmaker who made intaglio prints in collaboration with many important European and American artists of the 20th century. At the time of his death, The Guardian ter ...
, Picasso's preferred printer. In his atelier, he adopted Crommelynck's trademark sugar lift, as well as a system of the master's own devising of imposing a wooden frame onto the plate to ensure colour separation. Their early work together included ''Artist and Model'' (1973–74) and ''Contrejour in the French Style'' (1974). In 1976 Hockney created a portfolio of 20 etchings at Crommelynck's atelier, ''The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso''. The etchings refer to themes in a poem by
Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, "The Man with the Blue Guitar". It was published by Petersburg Press in October 1977. That year, Petersburg also published a book, in which the images were accompanied by the poem's text. In the summer of 1978, David Hockney stayed 6 weeks with his friend the printer Ken Tyler at Tyler's studio in New York, Tyler Graphics Ltd. Tyler invited Hockney to try a new technique with liquid paper. The process is painting with the paper itself, so the artist had to do it himself by hand. Each image becomes a unique work between printmaking and painting. In 6 weeks, Hockney created a total of 29 artworks with a series of 17 sunflowers and swimming pools. Many of the works are very similar, differentiated by changes in colour choice and application of the colour. Some are solely coloured using paper pulp, while some use spray paint to achieve certain details. Some of Hockney's other print portfolios include ''Home Made Prints'' (1986), ''Recent Etchings'' (1998) and ''Moving Focus'' (1984–1986), which contains lithographs related to '' A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlan.'' A retrospective of his prints, including 'computer drawings' printed on fax machines and inkjet printers, was exhibited at
Dulwich Picture Gallery Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London, which opened to the public in 1817. It was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination. Dulwich is the oldest pub ...
in London 5 February – 11 May 2014 and
Bowes Museum The Bowes Museum is an art gallery in the town of Barnard Castle, in County Durham in northern England. It was built to designs by Jules Pellechet and John Edward Watson to house the art collection of John Bowes and his wife Joséphine Benoî ...
, County Durham 7 June – 28 September 2014, with an accompanying publication ''Hockney, Printmaker'' by Richard Lloyd.


Photocollages

In the early 1980s, Hockney began to produce photo collages—which in his early explorations within his personal photo albums he referred to as "joiners"—first using Polaroid prints and subsequently 35mm, commercially processed colour prints. Using
Polaroid Polaroid may refer to: * Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras * Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation * Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs * Polar ...
snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject, Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because the photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, one of Hockney's major aims—discussing the way human vision works. Some pieces are
landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...
, such as ''Pearblossom Highway #2'', others
portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this ...
s, such as ''Kasmin 1982,'' and ''My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.'' Creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses. He did not like these photographs because they looked somewhat distorted. While working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles, he took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. On looking at the final composition, he realised it created a narrative, as if the viewer moved through the room. He began to work more with photography after this discovery and stopped painting for a while to exclusively pursue this new technique. Over time, however, he discovered what he could ''not'' capture with a lens, saying: "Photography seems to be rather good at portraiture, or can be. But, it can't tell you about space, which is the essence of landscape. For me anyway. Even
Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...
can't quite prepare you for what Yosemite looks like when you go through that tunnel and you come out the other side." Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one-eyed' approach, he returned to painting.


Other technology

In December 1985 Hockney used the
Quantel Paintbox The Quantel Paintbox was a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Produced by the British production equipment manufacturer Quantel (which, via a series of mergers, is now part of Grass ...
, a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch directly onto the screen. The resulting work was featured in a BBC series that profiled several artists. In 1999–2001, David's sister, Margaret, began experimenting with digital photography, scanning and computer printing, particularly making images of flowers scanning a small Japanese vase and fresh flowers. In 2003, she was experimenting with
Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...
, scanning summer flowers and building up images in layers which Margaret printed out on an A3 printer. In 2004, David went to stay with Margaret and she helped him scan his sketchbook of Yorkshire landscape and David soon began using a Wacom pad and pen directly into Photoshop. Since 2009, Hockney has painted hundreds of portraits, still lifes and landscapes using the Brushes iPhone and
iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...
Gayford, Martin.
David Hockney's IPad Doodles Resemble High-Tech Stained Glass
Bloomberg, 26 April 2010.
application, often sending them to his friends. In 2010 and 2011, Hockney visited
Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ...
to draw its landscape on his iPad. He used an iPad in designing a stained glass window at
Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
which celebrated the reign of
Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
. Unveiled in September 2018, the Queen's Window is located in the north transept of the Abbey and features a hawthorn blossom scene which is set in Yorkshire. From 2010 to 2014, Hockney created multi-camera movies using three to eighteen cameras to record a single scene. He filmed the landscape of
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
in various seasons, jugglers and dancers, and his own exhibitions within the
de Young Museum The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park, it is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the California Pala ...
and the
Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
. Hockney's earlier photocollages influenced his shift to another medium, digital photography. He combined hundreds of photographs to create multi-viewpoint "photographic drawings" of groups of his friends in 2014. Hockney picked the process back up in 2017, this time using the more advanced Agisoft PhotoScan photogrammetric software which allowed him to stitch together and rearrange thousands of photos. The resulting images were printed out as massive photomurals and were exhibited at
Pace Gallery The Pace Gallery is an American contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong ...
and
LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 196 ...
in 2018.


Plein air landscapes

In June 2007, Hockney's largest painting, '' Bigger Trees Near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique'', which measures , was hung in the
Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
's largest gallery in its annual
Summer Exhibition The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the months of June, July, and August. The exhibition includes paintings, prints, drawings, sc ...
. This work "is a monumental-scale view of a coppice in Hockney's native Yorkshire, between Bridlington and York. It was painted on 50 individual canvases, mostly working in situ, over five weeks last winter." In 2008, he donated it to
Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
in London, saying: "I thought if I'm going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It's going to be here for a while. I don't want to give things I'm not too proud of... I thought this was a good painting because it's of England... it seems like a good thing to do." The painting was the subject of a BBC1 Imagine film documentary by Bruno Wollheim called ''David Hockney: A Bigger Picture'' (2009) which followed Hockney as he worked outdoors over the preceding two years.


Theatre works

Hockney's first stage designs were for ''
Ubu Roi ''Ubu Roi'' (; "Ubu the King" or "King Ubu") is a play by French writer Alfred Jarry, then 23 years old. It was first performed in Paris in 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at the Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de ...
'' at London's
Royal Court Theatre The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England ...
in 1966,
Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
's ''
The Rake's Progress ''The Rake's Progress'' is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings '' A Rake's Prog ...
'' at the
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England. History Under the supervision of the Christie family, the festival has been held annually since 1934, ...
in England in 1975, and ''
The Magic Flute ''The Magic Flute'' (German: , ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a '' Singspiel'', a popular form during the time it was written that in ...
'' for Glyndebourne in 1978. In 1980, he agreed to design sets and costumes for a 20th-century French triple bill at the Metropolitan Opera House with the title ''Parade.'' The works were ''
Parade A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of s ...
'', a ballet with music by
Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
; '' Les mamelles de Tirésias'', an opera with libretto by
Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...
and music by
Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among th ...
, and '' L'enfant et les sortilèges'', an opera with libretto by
Colette Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...
and music by
Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...
. The reimagined set of '' L'enfant et les sortilèges'' from the 1983 exhibition ''Hockney Paints the Stage'' is a permanent installation at the
Spalding House Spalding House, also known as the Cooke-Spalding House and called Nuumealani (heavenly terrace) by Anna Rice Cooke, who commissioned it, together with its gardens constitute a -acre former art museum in Makiki Heights, Honolulu, Hawaii. Spalding ...
branch of the
Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...
. He designed sets for another triple bill of
Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
's ''
Le sacre du printemps , image = Roerich Rite of Spring.jpg , image_size = 350px , caption = Concept design for act 1, part of Nicholas Roerich's designs for Diaghilev's 1913 production of ' , composer = Igor Stravinsky , based_on ...
, Le rossignol,'' and ''
Oedipus Rex ''Oedipus Rex'', also known by its Greek title, ''Oedipus Tyrannus'' ( grc, Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, ), or ''Oedipus the King'', is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC. Originally, to the ancient Gr ...
'' for the
Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is opera ...
in 1981 as well as
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's ''
Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was comp ...
'' for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera in 1987, Puccini's ''
Turandot ''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is " Nessun dorma", ...
'' in 1991 at the
Chicago Lyric Opera Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria ...
, and
Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
's '' Die Frau ohne Schatten'' in 1992 at the
Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal ...
in London. In 1994, he designed costumes and scenery for twelve opera arias for the TV broadcast of
Plácido Domingo José Plácido Domingo Embil (born 21 January 1941) is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French ...
's ''
Operalia Plácido Domingo's Operalia, The World Opera Competition is an annual international competition for opera singers. Founded in 1993 by Plácido Domingo, the competition's varied prizes have been given to known artists such as Joseph Calleja, Rol ...
'' in Mexico City. Technical advances allowed him to become increasingly complex in model-making. At his studio he had a proscenium opening by in which he built sets in 1:8 scale. He also used a computerised setup that let him punch in and program lighting cues at will and synchronise them to a soundtrack of the music. In 2017, Hockney was awarded the
San Francisco Opera San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when h ...
Medal on the occasion of the revival and restoration of his production for ''Turandot''. The majority of Hockney's theater works and stage design studies are found in the collection of The David Hockney Foundation.


Exhibitions

David Hockney has been featured in over 400 solo exhibitions and over 500 group exhibitions. He had his first one-man show at Kasmin Limited when he was 26 in 1963, and by 1970 the Whitechapel Gallery in London had organised the first of several major retrospectives, which subsequently travelled to three European institutions. LACMA also hosted a retrospective exhibition in 1988 which travelled to The Met, New York, and
Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London. In 2004, he was included in the cross-generational
Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition ...
, where his portraits appeared in a gallery with those of a younger artist he had inspired, Elizabeth Peyton. In October 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London organised one of the largest ever displays of Hockney's portraiture work, including 150 paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks, and photocollages from over five decades. The collection ranged from his earliest self-portraits to work he completed in 2005. Hockney assisted in displaying the works and the exhibition, which ran until January 2007, was one of the gallery's most successful. In 2009, "David Hockney: Just Nature" attracted some 100,000 visitors at the Kunsthalle Würth in
Schwäbisch Hall Schwäbisch Hall (; "Swabian Hall"; from 1802 until 1934 and colloquially: ''Hall'' ) is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg located in the valley of the Kocher river, the longest tributary (together with its headwater Lein) of the ...
, Germany. From 21 January 2012 to 9 April 2012, the Royal Academy presented ''A Bigger Picture'', which included more than 150 works, many of which take entire walls in the gallery's brightly lit rooms. The exhibition is dedicated to landscapes, especially trees and
tree tunnel A tree tunnel is a road, lane or track where the trees on each side form a more or less continuous canopy overhead, giving the effect of a tunnel. The effect may be achieved in a formal avenue lined with trees or in a more rural setting with rand ...
s of his native Yorkshire. Works included oil paintings, watercolours, and drawings created on an iPad and printed on paper. Hockney said, in a 2012 interview, "It's about big things. You can make paintings bigger. We're also making photographs bigger, videos bigger, all to do with drawing." The exhibition drew more than 600,000 visitors in under 3 months. The exhibition moved to the
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
in
Bilbao ) , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = 275 px , map_caption = Interactive map outlining Bilbao , pushpin_map = Spain Basque Country#Spain#Europe , pushpin_map_caption ...
, Spain from 15 May to 30 September, and from there to the Ludwig Museum in
Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, Germany, between 27 October 2012 and 3 February 2013. From 26 October 2013 to 30 January 2014 ''David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition'' was presented at the
de Young Museum The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park, it is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the California Pala ...
, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The largest solo exhibition Hockney has had, with 397 works of art in more than 18,000 square feet, was curated by Gregory Evans and included the only public showing of ''The Great Wall'', developed during research for ''Secret Knowledge'', and works from 1999 to 2013 in a variety of media from camera lucida drawings to watercolours, oil paintings, and digital works. From 9 February to 29 May 2017 ''David Hockney'' was presented at the
Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
, becoming the gallery's most visited exhibition ever. The exhibition marked Hockney's 80th year and gathered together "an extensive selection of David Hockney’s most famous works celebrating his achievements in painting, drawing, print, photography and video across six decades". The show then travelled to
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
in Paris and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. The wildly popular retrospective landed among the top ten ticketed exhibitions in London and Paris for 2017 with over 4,000 visitors per day at the Tate and over 5,000 visitors per day in Paris. After the blockbuster exhibitions in 2017 of the works of decades past, Hockney moved right along to show his newest paintings on hexagonal canvases and mural-size 3D photographic drawings at
Pace Gallery The Pace Gallery is an American contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong ...
in 2018. He revisited paintings of Garrowby Hill, the Grand Canyon, and Nichols Canyon Road, this time painting them on hexagonal canvases to enhance aspects of reverse perspective. In 2019, his early work featured in his native
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
at
The Hepworth Wakefield The Hepworth Wakefield is an art museum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, which opened on 21 May 2011. The gallery is situated on the south side of the River Calder and takes its name from artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth who was born an ...
. In April–June 2022 an exhibition "Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction" was held at the
Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th V ...
, Cambridge and at the city's Heong Gallery.


Personal life

Hockney came out as gay at the age of 23, while studying at the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It ...
in London. Britain decriminalised homosexual acts seven years later in the
Sexual Offences Act 1967 The Sexual Offences Act 1967 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom (citation 1967 c. 60). It legalised homosexual acts in England and Wales, on the condition that they were consensual, in private and between two men who had attained t ...
. Hockney has explored the nature of gay love in his work, such in as the painting ''We Two Boys Together Clinging'' (1961), named after a poem by
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
. In 1963 he painted two men together in the painting ''Domestic Scene, Los Angeles'', one showering while the other washes his back. In the summer of 1966, while teaching at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, he met Peter Schlesinger, an art student who posed for paintings and drawings, and with whom he became romantically involved. Another of Hockney's romantic partners was the subject of his work was Gregory Evans; the two met in 1971 and began a relationship in 1974. While no longer romantically involved, they still work together, with Evans managing the David Hockney Studio. Hockney’s current partner is longtime companion Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima. Also known as JP, he also works with Hockney in his studio as his chief assistant. On the morning of 18 March 2013, Hockney's 23-year-old assistant, Dominic Elliott, died as a result of drinking drain cleaner at Hockney's Bridlington studio; he had also earlier drunk alcohol and taken
cocaine Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly used recreationally for its euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from the leaves of two Coca species native to South Am ...
, ecstasy and
temazepam Temazepam (sold under the brand names Restoril among others) is a medication of the benzodiazepine class which is generally used to treat severe or debilitating insomnia. It is taken by mouth. Temazepam is rapidly absorbed, and significant hyp ...
. Elliott was a first- and second-team player for Bridlington Rugby Club. It was reported that Hockney's partner drove Elliott to Scarborough General Hospital where he later died. The inquest returned a verdict of
death by misadventure In the United Kingdom, death by misadventure is the recorded manner of death for an accidental death, caused by a risk taken voluntarily. Misadventure in English law, as recorded by coroners and on death certificates and associated documents, ...
and Hockney was never implicated. In November 2015 Hockney sold his house in Bridlington, a five-bedroomed former guest house, for £625,000, cutting all his remaining ties with the town. He holds a California Medical Marijuana Verification Card, which enables him to buy
cannabis ''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: '' Cannabis sativa'', '' C. indica'', and '' C. ruderalis''. Alternative ...
for medical purposes. He has used hearing aids since 1979, but realised he was going deaf long before that. As of 2018, he kept fit by spending half an hour in the swimming pool each morning, and could stand for six hours at the easel. Lynn Barber (2016), "When I'm painting I feel 30. It's only when I stop that I know I'm not", ''
Sunday Times Magazine ''The Sunday Times Magazine'' is a magazine included with '' The Sunday Times''. In 1962 it became the first colour supplement to be published as a supplement to a UK newspaper, and its arrival "broke the mould of weekend newspaper publishing". ...
'', 11 September 2016, pp.10–15
Hockney has synaesthetic associations between sound, colour and shape.


Collections

Many of Hockney's works are housed in the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill in
Saltaire Saltaire is a Victorian model village in Shipley, part of the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, in West Yorkshire, England. The Victorian era Salt's Mill and associated residential district located by the River Aire and Leeds and ...
, near his hometown of Bradford. Another large group of works are held by The David Hockney Foundation. His work is in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including: *
Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
*
National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
, Canberra *
Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Buil ...
*
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...
, Humlebæk, Denmark * National Portrait Gallery, London *
Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, U.K. *
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
, Los Angeles *
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...
*
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
, Minneapolis *
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York *
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...
, New York *
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, Paris *
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...
* Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo *
Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Aboa Vetus and Ars Nova is a museum in central Turku, Finland. The museum is housed in a building known as the Rettig palace, originally built in 1928. Aboa Vetus displays portions of the city dating back to medieval times, while Ars Nova is a mu ...
,
Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...
,
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...
* Mumok, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna *
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...
, Washington, D.C. *
Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...
, Washington, D.C. *
Muscarelle Museum of Art The Muscarelle Museum of Art is a university museum affiliated with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection has been in existence since its first gift – a por ...
, Williamsburg, VA


Recognition

In 1967, Hockney's painting, '' Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool'', won the John Moores Painting Prize at the
Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History of the Gallery The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...
in Liverpool. Hockney was offered a
knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...
in 1990 but declined, before accepting an
Order of Merit The Order of Merit (french: link=no, Ordre du Mérite) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms, recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by ...
in January 2012. He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Progress medal in 1988 and the Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2003. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1997 and awarded The Cultural Award from the German Society for Photography (DGPh). He is a Royal Academician. In 2012, he was appointed to the
Order of Merit The Order of Merit (french: link=no, Ordre du Mérite) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms, recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by ...
, an honour restricted to 24 members at any one time for their contributions to the arts and sciences. He was a Distinguished Honoree of the National Arts Association, Los Angeles, in 1991 and received the First Annual Award of Achievement from the Archives of American Art, Los Angeles, in 1993. He was appointed to the board of trustees of the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust, New York in 1992 and was given a Foreign Honorary Membership to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997. In 2003, Hockney was awarded the Lorenzo de' Medici Lifetime Career Award of the Florence Biennale, Italy. Commissioned by The Other Art Fair, a November 2011 poll of 1,000 British painters and sculptors declared him Britain's most influential artist of all time. In 2012, Hockney was among the Culture of the United Kingdom, British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires. He is an honorary member of the Printmakers Council.


Art market

On 21 June 2006, Hockney's painting ''The Splash'' sold for £2.6 million. It was offered for auction again on 11 February 2020, with an estimate of £20–30 million and sold, to an unknown buyer, for £23.1 million. His ''A Bigger Grand Canyon'', a series of 60 canvases that combined to produce one enormous picture, was bought by the
National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
for $4.6 million. ''Beverly Hills Housewife'' (1966–67), a 12-foot-long acrylic that depicts the collector Betty Freeman standing by her pool in a long hot-pink dress, sold for $7.9 million at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...
in New York in 2008, the top lot of the sale and a record price for a Hockney. This was topped in 2016 when his ''Woldgate Woods'' landscape made £9.4 million at auction. The record was broken again in 2018 with the sale of ''Piscine de Medianoche'' (''Paper Pool 30)'' for $11.74 million and then doubled in the same Sotheby's auction when ''Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica'' sold for $28.5 million. On 15 November 2018, David Hockney's 1972 painting ''
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) ''Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)'' is a large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting by British artist David Hockney, completed in May 1972. It measures , and depicts two figures: one swimming underwater and one clothed male figur ...
'' sold at Christie's for $90.3 million with fees, surpassing the previous List of most expensive artworks by living artists, auction record for a living artist of $58.4 million, held by
Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-Surface fi ...
for one of his ''Balloon Dog'' sculptures. He had originally sold this painting for $20,000 in 1972.


The Hockney–Falco thesis

In the 2001 television programme and book ''Secret Knowledge'', Hockney posited that the Old Masters used ''camera obscura'' as well as ''camera lucida'' and lens techniques that projected the image of the subject onto the surface of the painting. Hockney argues that this technique migrated gradually from Northern Europe to Italy, and is the reason for the photographic style of painting we see in the Renaissance and later periods of art. He published his conclusions in the 2001 book ''Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters'', which was revised in 2006.


Public life

Like his father, Hockney was a conscientious objector, and worked as a medical orderly in hospitals during his National Service, 1957–1959. Hockney was a founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1979. He serves on the advisory board of the political magazine ''Standpoint (magazine), Standpoint'', and contributed original sketches for its launch edition, in June 2008, as well as agreeing to allow ''Standpoint'' to publish his previous views and pictures over the years. He is a staunch pro-tobacco campaigner and was invited to guest-edit BBC Radio's ''Today (BBC Radio 4), Today'' programme on 29 December 2009 in which he aired his views on the subject. In October 2010, he and a hundred other artists signed an open letter to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt, protesting against cutbacks in the arts.


In popular culture

In 1966, while working on a series of etchings based on love poems by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy, Hockney starred in a documentary by filmmaker James Scott (artist), James Scott, entitled ''Love's Presentation''. He was the subject of Jack Hazan's 1974 biopic, ''A Bigger Splash (1974 film), A Bigger Splash'', named after Hockney's 1967 A Bigger Splash, pool painting of the same name. Hockney was also the inspiration of artist Billy Pappas in the documentary film ''Waiting for Hockney'' (2008), which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. Hockney was inducted into ''Vanity Fair''s International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame in 1986. In 2005, Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey (fashion designer), Christopher Bailey centred his entire spring/summer menswear collection around the artist and in 2012, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a close friend, named a checked jacket after Hockney. In 2011, British ''GQ'' named him one of the 50 Most Stylish Men in Britain and in March 2013, he was listed as one of the Fifty Best-dressed Over-50s by ''The Guardian''. Hockney was commissioned to design the cover and pages for the December 1985 issue of the French edition of ''Vogue (magazine), Vogue''. Consistent with his interest in cubism and admiration for Pablo Picasso, Hockney chose to paint
Celia Birtwell Celia Birtwell, CBE (born 1941), is a British textile designer and fashion designer, known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which are influenced by Picasso and Matisse, and the classical world. She was well known for her ...
(who appears in several of his works) from different views for the cover, as if the eye had scanned her face diagonally. ''David Hockney: A Rake's Progress'' (2012) is a biography of Hockney covering the years 1937–1975, by writer/photographer Christopher Simon Sykes. In 2012, Hockney featured in BBC Radio 4's list of ''The New Elizabethans'' to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named Hockney among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character". The 2015 Luca Guadagnino's film ''A Bigger Splash (2015 film), A Bigger Splash'' was named after Hockney's painting. In 2022, he was portrayed by Laurence Fuller in the 7th episode of the 1st season of ''Minx (TV series), Minx''.


David Hockney Foundation

The David Hockney Foundation—both the UK registered charity 1127262 and the US 501(c)(3) private operating foundation—was created by the artist in 2008. In 2012, Hockney, worth an estimated $55.2 million (approx. £36.1 m), transferred paintings valued at $124.2 million (approx. £81.5 m) to the David Hockney Foundation, and gave an additional $1.2 million (approx. £0.79 m) in cash to help fund the foundation's operations. The foundation's mission is to advance appreciation and understanding of visual art and culture through the exhibition, preservation, and publication of David Hockney's work. Richard Benefield, who organised ''David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition'' in 2013–2014 at the
de Young Museum The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park, it is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the California Pala ...
in San Francisco, became the first executive director in January 2017. The foundation owns over 8,000 works – paintings, drawings, watercolours, complete editioned prints, stage design, multi-camera movies, and other media. They also hold 203 sketchbooks and Hockney's personal photo albums from 1961 to 1990. The foundation manages various loans to museums and exhibitions around the world, including ''Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockney!'' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty celebrating his 80th birthday, and the retrospective exhibitions of 2017–2018 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum,
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, and
Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
.


Books


By Hockney

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * In October 2016 Taschen published ''David Hockney: A Bigger Book'', costing £1,750 (£3,500 with an added loose print). The artist curated the selection of more than 60 years of his work reproduced within 498 pages. The book, weighing 78 lbs, had gone through 19 proof stages. The book came with an (optional) substantial wooden lectern. He unveiled the book at the Frankfurt Book Fair where he was the keynote speaker at the opening press conference.


Contributions by Hockney

*


References


Further reading

* Weschler, L. ''Cameraworks'' (with David Hockney – photographer) (1984) Alfred A. Knopf, (portions of the essay by Weschler appeared in the New Yorker (magazine), New Yorker in a slightly different form), * Geldzahler, H., Knight, C., Kitaj, R. B., Schiff, G., Hoy, A., Silver, K. E. and Weschler, L. ''David Hockney: A Retrospective (Painters & sculptors)'' (1988), Thames and Hudson, London, * Shanes, E. ''Hockney Posters'' (with David Hockney), (1988), Crown Publishing Group, * Luckhardt, U. and Melia, P. ''David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective'' (1995), Thames and Hudson, London, * Livingstone, M. ''David Hockney: Space and Line'' (1999), Annely Juda Fine Art, London, * Livingstone, M. ''David Hockney: Painting on Paper'' (2002), Annely Juda Fine Art, London, * Livingstone, M. ''David Hockney: Egyptian Journeys'' (2002), American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, * Frémon, J ''David Hockney, Close and far'' (2001) * Howgate, S. ''David Hockney Portraits'' (2006), National Portrait Gallery, * Melia, P. and Luckhardt, U. ''David Hockney: Paintings'' (2007), Random House, Prestel, Munich, * Becker, C. and Livingstone, M. ''David Hockney'' (2009), Swiridoff Verlag, Künzelsau, * Sykes, C. S. ''Hockney: The Biography'' (2011), Random House, Century, * Seckiner, S. ''South'' (Güney), published July 2013, consists of 12 article and essays. One of them, American Collectors, re-focus on David Hockney's importance in the philosophy of art. . * Dagen, P. ''David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate'' (2015) * Didier Ottinger, ''Pictures of Daily Life'', Galerie Lelong & Co. (2018) * Frémon, J, ''David Hockney en pays d'Auge, L'Echoppe,'' (2020)


External links

*
The David Hockney Foundation


* [http://www.yocc.co.uk Hockney Yorkshire Wolds Art Locations] {{DEFAULTSORT:Hockney, David David Hockney, 1937 births Living people 20th-century British painters 20th-century British photographers 20th-century English painters 21st-century British photographers 21st-century English painters 21st-century male artists Academics of the University for the Creative Arts Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts Alumni of the Royal College of Art Artist authors Artists from Bradford Artists from California British conscientious objectors British pop artists Deaf artists English contemporary artists English expatriates in the United States English male painters English printmakers Gay artists LGBT artists from the United Kingdom LGBT people from England Members of the Order of Merit Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Neo-expressionist artists The New Yorker people Opera designers People educated at Bradford Grammar School Photographers from Yorkshire Postmodern artists Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Royal Academicians