TRACES: David Hockney

Today is the occasion to bear in mind David Hockney (9/7/1937- ), Like other Pop artists, Hockney revived figurative painting in a style that referenced the visual language of advertising. What separates him from others in the Pop movement is his obsession with Cubism. In the spirit of the Cubists, Hockney combines several scenes to create a composite view, choosing tricky spaces where depth perception is already a challenge. This column is a tribute to artists, living or dead, who have left their mark in contemporary art. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…

By Efi Michalarou

David Hockney was born in Bradford, northern England. He was educated at Bradford College of Art (1953–57), where he studied traditional painting and life drawing and the Royal College of Art in London (1959–62). At the time, the college asked students to submit an essay along with their final work. Hockney refused, wanting to be judged solely on the basis of his art. Remarkably, the RCA, a bastion of tradition, changed its rules, he received a gold medal in the graduate competition. Hockney’s first solo show, held in 1963 at John Kasmin’s gallery. He visited the United States in 1961 and returned in 1964–67 to teach at the universities of Iowa, Colorado, and California and thereafter commuted between England and the United States. During this period he painted some of his best-known works, including “A Bigger Splash” (1967). He also began to design productions for the ballet, opera, and theater. In California during the ’60s, Hockney embraced the mood of experimentation, exploration, and iconoclasm. At a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the U.S. and Britain, Hockney’s open love affairs and unapologetic attitude attracted the attention of newspapers and magazines. He met and started a long-term relationship with Peter Schlesinger, who also frequently acted as his model, a relationship that lasted from 1966 to 1971. In 1973, Hockney moved to Paris, where he lived until 1975. By the mid-1970s, he was famous. 1974 saw a large traveling retrospective of his work, and a film about him directed by Jack Hazan. In 1976 Hockney published his autobiography and in 1978, he settled permanently in Los Angeles. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s had a particularly profound impact on Hockney, a retrospective of Hockney’s work was due to take place at London’s Tate gallery in 1988. He threatened to cancel it in protest of anti-homosexual legislation being proposed in Britain at the time. The ‘90s constituted a very productive period for Hockney, with a huge number of retrospectives and exhibitions around the world. From 2000-01 he researched and wrote a book about the Old Masters, developing a theory that these artists made use of the camera far earlier than previously thought. For his research, Hockney assembled photocopies of Old Master paintings, from Byzantine art to Van Gogh, on a huge wall in his LA studio. While Hockney’s theory met with significant resistance, it has gained widespread support from the art history community. In 2002, Hockney moved to the Yorkshire seaside town of Bridlington.