David Hockney – Ma Normandie

Artist: Hockney, David
Publisher: Galerie Lelong & Co
Price: £45 including postage in the UK
Publication Date: 2020
Edition: First edition
Size: Quarto
Condition: Fine

Condition:

The hardcover catalogue of the exhibition held at Galerie Lelong in Paris in 2020. Illustrated throughout. A fine copy.

David Hockney: A Brief Biography

David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is one of the most significant British artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer, and digital innovator, he is closely associated with Pop Art, though his work consistently transcends stylistic categorisation. His career is marked by a sustained exploration of space, perception, colour, and the act of looking, combined with an unusual openness to new technologies.

Early Life and Education

Hockney was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, into a modest, intellectually curious family. His father was a conscientious objector and advocate of progressive ideas, influences that encouraged independent thinking.

He studied at:

• Bradford School of Art (1953–1957)
• Royal College of Art, London (1959–1962)

At the Royal College, Hockney emerged as a leading figure among a generation that included Peter Blake and R. B. Kitaj. His early work combined:

• Expressionist figuration
• Text and graphic elements
• Personal subject matter, including coded references to his homosexuality at a time when it was still criminalised in Britain

Early Career and Pop Art

London and the early 1960s

Hockney’s early paintings, such as We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), show:

• Rough, energetic surfaces
• Graffiti-like inscriptions
• A fusion of literary reference (notably Walt Whitman) and personal narrative

Although often grouped with British Pop Art, Hockney’s work differs in its intimacy and autobiographical focus, rather than engagement with mass media imagery.

California and the Swimming Pools

Move to Los Angeles

In 1964, Hockney travelled to California, a move that transformed his work. He was captivated by:

• Light and clarity of atmosphere
• Modernist architecture
• The culture of leisure and openness

The pool paintings

His California paintings are among his most celebrated works, including:

• A Bigger Splash (1967)
• Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)

These works are characterised by:

• Flat, luminous colour
• Precise composition
• Exploration of water as both surface and abstraction

The swimming pool became a central motif, allowing Hockney to investigate representation of transparency, reflection, and movement.

Portraiture

Portraiture has remained central throughout Hockney’s career. His portraits are notable for:

• Psychological clarity
• Use of flat space combined with careful observation
• Depiction of friends, lovers, and cultural figures

Double portraits, such as Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970–71), explore relationships through spatial arrangement and gesture rather than overt narrative.

Photography and the “Joiners”

Photographic experiments

In the 1980s, Hockney turned to photography, producing composite images known as “joiners”. These works:

• Combine multiple photographs taken from slightly different viewpoints
• Challenge the single-point perspective of traditional photography
• Suggest a more temporal and experiential vision of seeing

This phase reflects his growing interest in how vision operates over time rather than as a fixed instant.

Theoretical Work and Art History

Hockney has also engaged deeply with art history and perception. His book Secret Knowledge (2001) argues that:

• Old Master painters used optical devices (mirrors, lenses)
• Western art history must be reconsidered in light of technological mediation

Though controversial, this work demonstrates his analytical engagement with how images are constructed.

Return to Landscape: Yorkshire

Late 1990s onwards

From the late 1990s, Hockney increasingly focused on the landscape of Yorkshire, particularly around Bridlington and Woldgate. These works are marked by:

• Bold colour
• Large scale
• Serial depiction of the same locations across seasons

Paintings such as The Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007) demonstrate a renewed engagement with observation and place.

Digital Innovation

iPad and iPhone drawings

Hockney has been a pioneer in using digital tools for fine art. From the 2000s onwards, he created:

• Drawings on iPhones and iPads
• Large-scale digital prints

These works maintain his core concerns—colour, light, and perception—while embracing new media. He has treated digital technology not as novelty but as a continuation of draughtsmanship.

Stage Design and Other Work

Hockney has also worked extensively in:

• Opera stage design (notably for Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera, and others)
• Printmaking, including etching and lithography
• Set and costume design

These projects extend his exploration of space into theatrical environments.

Themes and Artistic Concerns

Across his career, several themes recur:

• Seeing and perception: rejecting fixed perspective in favour of multiple viewpoints
• Space and composition: flattening and restructuring pictorial space
• Colour: bold, often non-naturalistic but structurally precise
• Time: representing duration rather than single moments

Personal Life and Identity

Hockney has been openly gay throughout his career, and his work often reflects:

• Personal relationships
• Intimacy and domestic life
• A quiet but persistent challenge to social norms

His openness was significant in the context of mid-twentieth-century Britain.

Honours and Recognition

Hockney has received numerous honours, including:

• Appointment to the Order of Merit (OM)
• Major retrospectives at institutions such as the Tate, Royal Academy, and Metropolitan Museum of Art

He is widely regarded as one of the most influential living British artists.

Concluding Assessment

David Hockney’s career spans more than six decades and encompasses painting, photography, printmaking, and digital media. His work is unified not by style but by a sustained investigation into how we see and represent the world. From the swimming pools of California to the hedgerows of Yorkshire, he has continually reinvented both subject and method while remaining rooted in observation.

His enduring significance lies in combining technical innovation with clarity of vision, demonstrating that tradition and experimentation are not opposites but complementary forces in modern art.

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