The Optimism of David Hockney

I’m pretty deaf. I don’t really like listening that much any more. I prefer just working, so it’s fine for me here, absolutely fine.
– David Hockney

David Hockney moved to Normandy before the pandemic began. He said that he was looking for a place where he could smoke a cigarette in a cafe after a meal…something he can’t do in many other places around the world. What Hockney found was a small farmhouse, surrounded by four acres of fields with blossoming trees.

Hockney’s work has always reflected the joy he finds in his surroundings. Whether at home in Hollywood Hills or Yorkshire or traveling through Mexico, Hockney has painted what has appeared in front of his eyes…eyes of an artist who takes great pleasure in the world around him.

He’s always been open to new techniques and new technology. Even at age 83, he’s still experimenting with his iPad drawings, the way he did with new photographic technology in the 1980s, when a friend left a Polaroid camera at his house and he began to experiment with composite images. 

Around that time, Hockney also experimented with perspective. He created The Moving Focus Series when his car broke down on a trip in Mexico and he was forced to stay in hotel while it was being repaired. The Series combines the Renaissance tradition of fixed-viewpoint painting with the Eastern aesthetic of multiple, narrative viewpoints within the same picture. Hotel Acatlan: Two Weeks Later, from The Moving Focus Series is available at VFA.

Hockney says that he is content to paint every day. In a recent interview with the BBC, Hockney had advice for anyone who feels bored because of the quarantine:

“If you’re bored because of the lockdown and you’re trapped in some small place, then if you look at the world and really look at it, it’s very beautiful,” he said. “It’s a mad world really but it’s very beautiful to look at. Nature is always beautiful, it’s always harmonious. But you’ve really got to look at it. You’ve got to look at it to see colour. You’ve really got to look at it intensely. I would suggest that’s what you do. Just sit down and look at it or walk and look , at it, and it’s very beautiful really.”

The Royal Academy of Arts in London is getting ready for an exhibit of 116 new iPad drawings. David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 will run from May 23 through September 26, 2021.

Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of David Hockney or any of the other fine art work available at VFA.