Making a Splash - Remembering David Hockney
Bulletins from a French butcher's shop
What a truly magnificent life he led. David’s Hockney’s death at the age of 88 was hardly a surprise, but how sad it feels for England to have lost one of the greatest artists and most exciting characters of my and many other lifetimes. I feel so lucky to have seen his giant retrospective last year at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Hockney’s masterpieces, his constant experimenting, his inexhaustible energy, his incomparable style, all this filled the vast exhibition space - 11 cavernous rooms - of the shimmering glass and steel Parisian palace designed by the late Frank Gehry in his trademark gravity-defying fantasy style.
It was one of those all-encompassing exhibitions that leaves you shattered at the brilliance of the single lifetime that produced such consistent magic. I’ll leave it to Hockney’s obituarists to explain how he worked and why it mattered; all I can tell you is this.
In an age when it often feels difficult to be proud of being English, I couldn’t feel prouder that England - or perhaps I should say Yorkshire - should have produced such a glorious Englishman. We shared an unkempt blondeness and a taste for striped socks; I wish I’d been brave enough to follow his example in designer spectacles. He was, amongst many other things, a fashion icon. Hockney lived the life he wanted to lead, and we’re all the richer for it.
For those of you who didn’t or couldn’t make it to Paris for last year’s show, here’s a hint of the treasures that Hockney has left behind; starting, on pink walls below (of course they were pink. This is David Hockney!) with three of the paintings that helped propel him to global fame. From left to right: The Splash (1967); Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972 - which sold for $90m in 2018, breaking the auction record for a living artist; and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1971).
Photo: Marc Domage, Fondation Louis Vuitton
The photographs below are all mine from our visit to his Paris celebration - it felt so much more than a retrospective. I hope they give you a hint of the enormity of the very special talent he shared with us all his life. Each photograph has a caption from the reviews that greeted the opening of the show.
“So moving I had tears in my eyes” - The Guardian
“Stunning” - Le Monde
“A knockout” - The Times
“An absolutely enormous splash” - The Art Newspaper
“A joyful vision” - New York Times
“The most monumental David Hockney show any of us will ever see” - The Independent
A terrific piece, mon gar. We really wish we had seen the Paris show. I don't know how we missed it. But your pix give us at least a glimpse into his genius.
I was amused to read in one of his obits that, in his twenties, Hockney couldn't bring himself to meet Picasso because it would have been a waste of the great man's time.