David Hockney: An Appreciation

He is somewhat the epitome of nonconformity. A figurative painter when figurativeness was getting out of fashion, posing nude, as a 40-year-old in reasonably good shape, on a literary review front cover to stress his point; still a smoker despite suffering a stroke; openly gay at a time when bigoted legislation forbade it; carrying messages of springlike optimism and contemplative natural beauty in the face of the doom and gloom of many artists. Yet David Hockney (British, b. 1937) is instilled by a traditional Victorian work ethic. With a career spanning over more than six decades, characterized by cultivated singularity, eclectic styles, visual and technical innovations, he takes after one of his forerunners and masters, Pablo Picasso, who remained himself a figurative painter until the end despite his many explorations.

Like many artists, Hockney was influenced by the creative South of France, whether it be by Cézanne, Van Gogh, or above all Matisse and Picasso, and has paid tribute to that heritage in his oeuvre. A naturalist more than a realist, humorous and subtle in his propositions, subversive or admirative toward his subject matters, referencing Renaissance art history in autobiographical citations, Hockney stands for freedom and impudence as much as for momentousness and generosity in art. Although he has been at home more recently in Normandy, in one of the most picturesque villages surrounded with lush landscapes, colorful blossoms, and evolving sun lights that inspire him, Hockney really found his utopia in California. By analogy, what Nice was to Matisse, Los Angeles is to Hockney: vivid colors, a joyful sense of life, and an unabashed logic of appeal and seduction, bordering on voyeurism.

Hockney’s multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and polystylistic oeuvre goes beyond swimming pool, shower, or bedroom scenes. His golden-state years and regular residence have opened up a new array of interest for hedonist or serene artificiality and contemporaneity, ranging from double portraiture and interiors to landscapes and still lives. In Hockney’s eyes, Los Angeles becomes an exotic and sensual paradise, comparable to the Mediterranean shores, where abundance and the good life are at reach. Water is attractive because it allows to look through the surface: Its transparency notably breaks hypocritical limitations to the male nude in contemporary representations. In the 1960s, a period of social awakening and liberation, Hockney passes through neat facades to expose his desires, which will become tangible in his passionate relationship with one of his summer class students at the University of California, Peter Schlesinger, to become his muse for five years.

The end of that companionship, circuitously transcribed in his Portrait of an Artist, as well as the subsequent passing of the master Picasso, led him to question his art.

Fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci’s rendering of water movements, Hockney revels in the idea of spending fifteen days painting an event of two seconds, implemented in his famous A Bigger Splash, where the human figure is only alluded to. A double portrait of his kind-spirited parents underscores his sensitivity and openness. Such ongoing experimentation and inquisitiveness in techniques, styles, and personal citations largely explain Hockney’s recognition and longevity. He would never settle for a standstill, going on in recent years to draft on computers and tablets with equal verve what he views as relevant pictorial renditions of and for today’s world.

Hockney’s losses and tragedies, including age-related challenges, or upsetting lockdowns during a pandemic, led him to pause and revive his positive energy. As an accomplished contemporary artist, he surmounts downturns with his subjective resources, agile and insatiable observation, exalted colorism, and a communicative, irresistible zest for life. By carrying on into his eighties with his work, which he has defined as “a better high than sex or drugs”, he somewhat exposes his conceptual appreciation for bohemian hedonism while showing its practical limits.

David Hockney’s depictions stand for the necessary balance in human existence, sympathy and gratitude in complex relations, and the legitimate, at times thwarted but ever resumed quest for happiness. In addition to pleasuring onlookers, they instigate thought through irony and less apparent readability. They encourage upcoming artists to follow their own path of singularity, innovation, and optimism.