"The World According to David Hockney," by Martin Gayford, Thames & Hudson publishers, seems designed as a holiday stocking stuffer: colorful images by Hockney, including several greatest hits, and Hockney quotes, or "epigrams" as Gayford describes them, grouped by topics. This nouvelle appetizer of a book (I've only viewed the advance copy pdf) won't burnish Hockney's reputation much, but that's beside the point. Hockney's decades long run and commercial success is unique.
He exploded on the scene with student work at London's Royal College of Art. His painterly figurative work, in a faux naive style, with hand-lettering citing his heroes like Whitman and Gandhi with sly gay references, put him on the map, eclipsing the other "Young Contemporary" British artists garnering attention right out of the gate. The reaction to this work, with collector and dealer interest, propelled him, and he says, "In about 1963, I realized I could live from selling the work I made, and I thought to myself, 'I'm rich.'"
But his exposure to California, "home of sunny movie studios and beautiful semi-naked people," the light and shadows, vegetation, swimming pools, male bodies gleaned from softcore physique magazines, and portraits of collectors and well-known literary and art world figures, offered him his great themes and made his reputation.
Even today, "New York Times" critic Walker Mimms reviewing "The Swimmer," a summer group show dedicated to swimming and pools, had to mention "...the absence of David Hockney, the Rembrandt of pools."
Coming out
As for coming out, Hockney explains, "What I heard about Diaghilev was, he was homosexual and absolutely accepted it, and I thought, that's what I will do, just accept it...These (early) pictures are partly propaganda of something I felt hadn't been propagandized .... homosexuality. I felt it should be done...because it was part of me it was a subject that I could treat humorously."
And characteristic of his work going forward, he made work suitable for living room walls, eschewing anything too lurid or explicit, or political content. More sophisticated viewers might know that subjects like Christopher Isherwood and Dan Bachardy, Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott were couples, and that handsome young men like Peter Schlesinger (a student plucked out of one of his painting classes at UCLA) were his boyfriends, but he mainstreamed his stylish California milieu, along with the palm trees and pools. A Hockney print of a bather makes a suggestive appearance in Richard Gere's lair in the 1980 stylish noir "American Gigolo."
Hockney's wide-ranging interests besides traditional two-dimensional painting, drawing and prints extended to opera set designs and videos. His peripatetic lifestyle meant homes and studios on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, Malibu, rural Yorkshire, England, and now in the countryside in Normandy, France.
Hockney enthuses about image-making using new technologies like copy machines, Photoshop (several of his paintings suggest Disney on acid), and iPads. Several epigrams, however sincere, are platitudes for cushion embroidery: "Paint what you love. Love is the only serious subject. Art should be about joy."
Others are amusing, as in this dumb/smart Andy Warhol-like remark: "The art of the past is living, the art of the past that has died is not around."
Hockney manifests an admirable dedication to work, and exploration, but also perhaps tunnel vision: "I just let politics do what it's doing. I'm not interested enough. I'm interested in other things." The closest he comes to an environmental perspective is the observation that "the world is beautiful and if we don't think so, we are doomed as species."
Dark thoughts, times
While admitting to loneliness (Sykes suggests it was because of short-lived affairs given his penchant for much younger men), he is critical of "...people who simply live for sex. They want somebody new all the time, which means it's a full-time job, which means you can't do any other work."
And "Aids (sic) changed New York. The first person to die of Aids that I knew was in 1983, and then for ten years it was lots of people. If all those people were still here, I think it would be a different place." Which perhaps explains this (undated) put-down: "We were recently in San Francisco. It's a very boring city now. Where are the Harvey Milks?"
The book, in general, is marred by the abbreviated quotes, without context, dates, or index. The curious would be wise to consult Christopher Simon Sykes' 2014 two-volume Hockney authorized biography, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Pilgrim's Progress."
For example, Hockney's assertion that he "suffer(s) from the urge to jump off high places like a bird" gets additional meaning when he quotes Hockney on suicidal thoughts: "We all have sometimes, but it lasts a short time. When you go to the Grand Canyon, you can drive to the edge and just go on driving, but I know the minute I would go over the edge, I would regret it."
Sykes also reveals the backstory of the enigmatic "Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy" painting, perhaps his most famous other than the auction record-breaking "Portrait of an Artist." The subjects are Celia Birtwell Clark, who became Hockney's close friend and favorite subject, ever youthful like Alex Katz's Ada, and Ossie Clark, a fashion designer and briefly Hockney's lover from student days, who later met a tragic end at the hands of an Italian vagrant/boyfriend.
Smoking section
The book opens with a now elderly Hockney self-portrait, cigarette jammed defiantly in mouth. This fixation on smoking ("I just love tobacco and I will go on smoking until l fall over") can't, unfortunately, be passed off as "English eccentricity" or cranky libertarianism.
Hockney is dead serious and Sykes mentions his splenetic attacks upon British Labor politicians for supporting bans on smoking in restaurants and bars. He was even angry with Hillary Clinton for no-smoking rules in the White House.
"It used to be you couldn't be gay. Now you can be gay but you can't smoke. It's always something."
Hockney brags he's never set foot in a gym, but he underwent an angioplasty in 1990 and suffered a stroke in 2012. He's 87 now, but let's hope he makes it to 100, working away in a cloud of smoke.
'The World According to David Hockney,' by Martin Gayford, Thames & Hudson, $19.95 hardcover. www.thamesandhudsonusa.com
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!