Thames & Hudson Publishers are marking the approach of Hockney's nonagenarian status with a new book of his artwork. Has any modern artist enjoyed such popularity over such a long period, his career beginning fresh out of art school and now, in ripe old age, still working away in the Normandy countryside.
"Hockney's Pictures" is an updated and expanded version of the volume from 2004, edited and with a minimum of texts by Andrew Brown, and packed with 522 illustrations. Hockney's droll wit is also on display:
"Americans take showers all the time. I knew that from experience and physique magazines," and, "The moment you realize what Picasso is doing...you become aware, perhaps more than ever before, there are different forms of realism and some are more real than others."
Hockney's work lends itself well to the categories the editors have chosen: "Problems of Depiction, Life Stilled, Portraits, Space and Light, and Endless Inspiration." Hockney includes more experimental work, evidence of his self-confidence and risk-taking, and some that don't soar, to be expected in a volume of so many images, in different media spanning six decades.
Early art
The book begins with Hockney's painterly Pop work from the early 1960s and proceeds with familiar examples of the mature work, often painted in a more precise and realistic manner, like "Still Life with T.V.," 1969, the widely reproduced paintings "Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy," 1970-1 and "Mt. Fuji with Flowers," 1972.
He expanded his oeuvre to opera sets and photo collages such "Pearblossom Highway," 1986, desert scenery with highway signs and roadside litter. Happily, the book also features recent work, primarily pastoral landscapes, from Yorkshire, England, and France.
There are many unfamiliar images, including photographs and sketchbook pages, rife with evidence of his virtuosity and aplomb with line, color, and composition. Some are awesomely beautiful, such as the watercolors "View from the Mayflower Hotel, New York (Evening)," 2002, "A Gap in the Hedgerow," 2004, and the photo collage "Rain on the Pool," 1982.
Sketchbook pages display a masterful, loose line. "Como," 2003 as well as "Andalusia. Mosque, Cordova," 2004, are notable examples. Dedicated Hockney enthusiasts might peruse "David Hockney by David Hockney" published in 1977 for a more complete compilation of the earlier work; and museum goers will find some images familiar from the sprawling 2013 San Francisco de Young Museum exhibition of his work.
Hockney's sunbathers and swimmers, cultural icons like writers and poets, art dealers and collectors, friends and amours, made his reputation and he's never really left the figure. One of his most famous double portraits is of the novelist Christopher Isherwood and painter Don Bachardy at home in Santa Monica, suggestive fruit bowl on table, from 1968, and Hockney and the painting play a supporting role in the new Isherwood biography, "Christopher Isherwood: Inside Out" by Katherine Bucknell.
The portrait was quite obviously a labor of love for Hockney (Bachardy's depiction proved especially hard, as he was mostly absent studying art in London), who wept when it moved from one private collection into another and not into a museum for public viewing.
Hockney blurbs the biography, calling it "A first rate biography of the man, the writer, and the lover," although the biography includes the Francis Bacon put-down of Hockney ("She's no good") and Isherwood's diary comments during Hockney's well-documented ("A Bigger Splash" cinema verite even) break-up with Peter Schlesinger:
"Oh, yes, indeed, David is a monster in the making. But I love him and Don loves him and he is lovable...and wonderful and kind and generous and full of life."
New techniques
However, his more recent posed portraits of seated figures against bright backdrops have a repetitive quality, and don't reveal much about the sitters. Even uber-art dealer Larry ("Go Go") Gagosian looks just normal, with none of the penetrating psychological acuity of an Alice Neel portrait.
And some, like "Dancers I and II" from 2014, referencing the great painting by Matisse, seem awkward by comparison and could have been left out. His eagerness to try new processes like iPads, iPhones, and Brush painting app also sometimes trips him up, like the recent computer-arranged compositions of figures in rooms or the Photoshop "Fantasia"-esque "Arrival of Spring in Wolgate, East Yorkshire 2011, sprawling 12 by 32 ft.
The uncharacteristic, odd remake of Masaccio's "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden," 2002, pairs Adam and Eve figures with a lab slide floating array of blobs and blots, a rather off-putting Eden.
But clearly Hockney is now in love with, and reinvigorated, by landscape, in the scenes from Yorkshire and Normandy. His is not the more contrived wisteria-covered, Japanese-style bridge of Monet, staged Nature as subject matter (although he paints Giverny), but more rustic, bucolic fields, rows of trees, ponds, and cloudscapes.
More contrived landscapes like the tortured seascapes of Malibu from 1988-9 have yielded to idyllic vistas of flowering shrubs and allees of trees, perpetual spring and summer seasons. His vision is sweet but not sappy, evidence of a life not marred by rue or regret. Hockney daily makes simple iPhone images of flowers to send to friends, perhaps partly to reassure them he's still up and about, gazing out the window, liking and depicting what he sees.
'Hockney's Pictures,' Thames & Hudson Publishers, $43, www.thamesandhudson.com
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