David Hockney 25, Fondation Louis Vuitton: Will transform how we think about this brilliant artist
Dressed in a flat cap and tweed suit (but, uncharacteristically, without a cigarette), David Hockney, 87, is whizzing on a mobility scooter around his colossal new retrospective in Paris. With more than 400 artworks produced, astonishingly, over seven decades, the exhibition is – fittingly, for an artist who relishes titles that contain the word 'bigger' – his biggest yet. What's it like for Britain's most popular living artist to see his career laid out in such glorious fashion? 'It's fantastic,' he tells me with a smile, eyes twinkling behind canary-yellow, round-framed specs. 'I'm still here!'
'Fantastic' is the 'mot juste'. Timed to coincide with his favourite season, as blossom erupts outside in the Bois de Boulogne, David Hockney 25 is a rousing, dopamine-unleashing celebration and summation of a brilliant, beloved artist's work.
On the billowing silver exterior of the Louis Vuitton Foundation designed by his friend Frank Gehry (whose blue-eyed, crinkly-lipped portrait, with hands like red gloves, appears halfway through the show), Hockney's quasi-handwritten words are picked out in pink neon: 'Do remember they can't cancel the spring'. As (potential) swansongs go, it's remarkably uplifting.
Yet, more than this, as signalled by the subtitle ('Less is Known than People Think') of two strange, spiritually intense new paintings at the end, fresh from Hockney's Marylebone studio (he moved to London from his half-timbered farmhouse in Normandy in 2023), the show may transform how we think about a figure occasionally rebuked for his escapism. On this evidence, Hockney is a complex, even (at times) melancholic artist, seemingly compelled – to my surprise – by a burning otherworldly yearning.
There are 11 rooms, beginning with a pleasingly chunky, two-gallery synopsis of his career to the turn of the millennium, filled with many of his greatest hits (including 1967's A Bigger Splash, lent by the Tate), as well as a sombre 1955 portrait of his dark-suited father, like something by Édouard Vuillard (and the first painting he ever sold).
Much of the rest of the exhibition dwells on his output over the past quarter century, with galleries devoted to landscapes executed in Yorkshire during the 2000s, as well as, from 2019, rural Normandy.
I was snippy about some of Hockney's Yorkshire pictures when they appeared at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2012; the smaller works remain parochial and minor. But the grand paintings in which, say, hawthorns like gigantic squidgy chess pieces appear to undulate and dance while exuding creamy blossoms like squashed eclairs? They're radiantly weird.
With its anthropomorphic purple tree stump, like a grumpy forest god surrounded by pupal orange streaks, Winter Timber (2009) is impregnated with supernatural, cosmic significance: beside a track, felled orange logs laid out like the yellow brick road lead the eye to a vortex of swirling blue branches, like a portal to another dimension. Few galleries could so suavely accommodate Hockney's Bigger Trees near Warter (2007), an oil painting on 50 canvases depicting a wintry coppice irradiated by uncanny, seemingly fluorescent reddish-pink.
Throughout, artworks confound the notion that Hockney is nothing but a hedonist depicting sunshine and sex by the pool. A graffiti-like picture in the opening room, with two forms like bristly Weetabix depicting men urgently going at it, was painted in 1961, when homosexuality in Britain was still illegal; Berlin: A Souvenir (1962) seems to represent a nightclub frequented by wraiths.
In a 2013 portrait, Hockney's partner, 'JP' (Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima), clutches his head as if bereft; nearby, in 15 grimacing self-portraits grouped together on a royal-blue wall, the artist appears, by turns, befuddled, plaintive, even vacant. In the final picture, he cups his ear, reminding us of his deafness, and, by extension, the inevitability of physical decline.
Several Normandy landscapes depict raindrops plopping into ponds or sliding down a window's panes. One vast composition, created using an iPad, turns the setting sun into a volcanic explosion; elsewhere, Hockney portrays clouds like luminous smoke rings. A gallery of nocturnes depicts the artist's garden tinged with silvery lunar reflections. Spectral and mysterious, they're the antithesis of the Hockney we thought we knew.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I paint extreme emotions': Rachel Jones on her riotously colourful paintings – and her obsession with mouths
Viewers may find Rachel Jones's paintings 'beautiful', but they should be warned: the artist herself doesn't love that word. 'In our culture, the idea of beauty sadly isn't discussed in a critical, rich way – it's much more reductive as a term,' says the 34 year old. 'I hope that when people describe the work as beautiful, it doesn't just stop there.' Her aim, she says, is to pull viewers in deeper, beyond the surface of the work. Despite her youth, Jones is already preparing to open a major retrospective. Her forthcoming show at Dulwich Picture Gallery will see her large-scale, gloriously colourful abstractions hung alongside works from the museum's collection. It will be Jones's first institutional solo show in the UK, and also the museum's first solo show of a contemporary artist in its main exhibition space. 'The opportunity I have to look at everything as a whole is incredible,' she says. 'It's not often that you get to do that at such an early stage in your career. It's a real gift and privilege to look back at what I've done in the last six years or so.' After graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019, Jones was picked up by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, had a work acquired by the Tate, and was part of solo or group exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Hepworth Wakefield, as well as galleries and institutions around North America, Europe and Asia. In the past couple of years, though, she has slowed down. She is no longer represented by a gallery and has broadened her practice to include sound and performance as well as painting. 'It's good to learn those different ways of making and how they influence each other,' she says, telling me that sound practice has become more embedded in her day-to-day thinking. Her first big sound work, a short opera called Hey Maudie, was performed at St James's Piccadilly in 2023. She is now working on expanding it into a full-length opera. 'I also want to pour more energy into my karaoke performances,' she says, smiling. 'In my personal life, I love to sing karaoke whenever I can, but it's something I haven't been able to explore as much as I would like to in my work.' Jones's cosy studio in Ilford, east London, is stuffed with the accumulation of six years' work. 'Each series of paintings moves forward,' she says, 'but it's happening more drastically in the last year in ways that are quite surprising to me, but really exciting.' She frames such rapid change around learning: she is using colours she is less confident with to give herself a challenge, and pushing herself to be more comfortable using negative space in her paintings, where the canvas is left visible. She works on raw linen now, rather than cotton canvas, giving her works an earthier, organic texture and tone. 'Even if I don't fully understand what I'm doing, I know to trust my impulses,' she says. 'I can wrestle with the process more.' There is a sense of peeling back and then building from the ground up in Jones's attitude, and in the work itself. When young artists receive the kind of immediate acclaim and scrutiny that Jones did after art school, it can be hard to find the space to reflect. Jones has worked hard to cultivate that space, and her experience of quick fame has trained her to articulate her practice carefully. 'There's a huge desire for artists to embed their work in a narrative,' she says. 'I don't think that's as useful as people think it is.' As she tells me about the evolutions and experimentations in her latest work, for the Dulwich show and for a site-specific commission at the Courtauld Gallery opening in September, she talks almost entirely about formal elements, rather than storytelling: new ways she uses her medium of oil pastels or new intentions behind her mark-making, not her personal narrative. But there is also a bit of figuration in Jones's largely abstract practice. From the beginning of her career, she has worked with the motif of the mouth. Her earlier works, such as lick your teeth, they so clutch (2021), now in Tate's collection, are bright colour fields that use the outlines of teeth to frame form and colour. In the new work, the mouth has become a more defining form. 'There is a little bit more vulnerability in the way that I'm using the mouth as a symbol now,' Jones says. Using cartoons as her main visual references, Jones sees the mouths in her latest work as open, maybe yelling or laughing or screaming or crying. 'Those are quite extreme emotions,' she says, explaining the way mouths doing those things are usually attached to a body that is dysregulated or overwhelmed. Jones is so adept at describing her process and intention as an artist, but leaves the meaning of her work more open-ended. Each viewer will have their own response to the work: 'My way is just one way,' she says. 'So many people are intimidated by visual art. I want people to feel like the works invite them to speak.' Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons will be at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 10 June to 19 October; her commission for the Courtauld Gallery, London, opens on 25 September
Time Out
4 days ago
- Time Out
Trishna
Forget the elevated chains, the Michelin magnets, the Desi pubs and the Indian-Irish fusion joints (alright, there's only one of those). Trishna in Marylebone pre-dates and outshines them all, a graceful doyenne, gliding across the hectic ballroom of London's high-end Indian restaurant scene. There's nothing particularly flash about Trishna's baby-blue panelling and simple wooden furniture. It doesn't scream 'design consultancy has been here' or 'immersive dining concept'. Instead the vibe is straightforward and friendly. This is a 'normal' neighbourhood restaurant that achieved (well earned) city-wide fame, jacked up the prices (understandably) and lived happily ever after. It's your talented and hard-working grandmother, happily remarried to a millionaire. If you can accept the cost, Trishna will deliver every time The considerable cost of eating at Trishna is reflected in the food's quality. Everything bar a few starters is top notch, the kind of delicate-yet-punchy south Asian cuisine you'd be mad to try replicating at home. A perfect example of a 'Trish dish' is the bream: jade-like slices of fish, marinated with coriander and green chilli, served with a floral tomato salad. Not only is it as eye-catching as a David Hockney still life, the bream has a high-wire balance of flavours, cooked with expert precision in the tandoor. Another signature offering is the legendary aloo chat, a lip-smacking lattice of chutney and sev, crowning a chickpea and potato nest. It's almost as if the folks at Trishna saw Gymkhana's famous aloo chaat, had a taste, rolled up their sleeves and said 'hold my (Cobra) beer'. The hits don't end there. Pray silence for Trishna's Dorset brown crab - a dish that staff bring out with a silent-yet-discernible pride, like a Soviet leader on parade day, watching his troops roll out a nuclear missile. It's a nourishing bowl of chive-and-chilli-topped crab meat, imbued with a truly shocking (in a good way) depth of flavour. Not only the best thing we ate at Trishna, it's one of the best things we've eaten all year. Hot on its heels in the tasty stakes was the beef shortrib, a hockey puck of stewed and shredded meat, atop a chickpea dosa raft floating on a pulsating bed of coconut and shallots. Meanwhile, the Goan prawn biriyani - served with a cute pink-peppercorn raita - is a delicate delight, the shining antithesis of claggy, heavy curried rice dishes the world over. Some of the starters are comparatively one-note. And the desserts, as you'd expect, aren't really the point. But if you can accept the cost, Trishna will deliver every time. The vibe Quietly confident south Indian fine-dining establishment, masquerading as a 'normal restaurant'. The food South Indian cooking that packs flavour and nuance into every dish.
Time Out
4 days ago
- Time Out
Trishna London
Forget the elevated chains, the Michelin magnets, the Desi pubs and the Indian-Irish fusion joints (alright, there's only one of those). Trishna in Marylebone pre-dates and outshines them all, a graceful doyenne, gliding across the hectic ballroom of London's high-end Indian restaurant scene. There's nothing particularly flash about Trishna's baby-blue panelling and simple wooden furniture. It doesn't scream 'design consultancy has been here' or 'immersive dining concept'. Instead the vibe is straightforward and friendly. This is a 'normal' neighbourhood restaurant that achieved (well earned) city-wide fame, jacked up the prices (understandably) and lived happily ever after. It's your talented and hard-working grandmother, happily remarried to a millionaire. If you can accept the cost, Trishna will deliver every time The considerable cost of eating at Trishna is reflected in the food's quality. Everything bar a few starters is top notch, the kind of delicate-yet-punchy south Asian cuisine you'd be mad to try replicating at home. A perfect example of a 'Trish dish' is the bream: jade-like slices of fish, marinated with coriander and green chilli, served with a floral tomato salad. Not only is it as eye-catching as a David Hockney still life, the bream has a high-wire balance of flavours, cooked with expert precision in the tandoor. Another signature offering is the legendary aloo chat, a lip-smacking lattice of chutney and sev, crowning a chickpea and potato nest. It's almost as if the folks at Trishna saw Gymkhana's famous aloo chaat, had a taste, rolled up their sleeves and said 'hold my (Cobra) beer'. The hits don't end there. Pray silence for Trishna's Dorset brown crab - a dish that staff bring out with a silent-yet-discernible pride, like a Soviet leader on parade day, watching his troops roll out a nuclear missile. It's a nourishing bowl of chive-and-chilli-topped crab meat, imbued with a truly shocking (in a good way) depth of flavour. Not only the best thing we ate at Trishna, it's one of the best things we've eaten all year. Hot on its heels in the tasty stakes was the beef shortrib, a hockey puck of stewed and shredded meat, atop a chickpea dosa raft floating on a pulsating bed of coconut and shallots. Meanwhile, the Goan prawn biriyani - served with a cute pink-peppercorn raita - is a delicate delight, the shining antithesis of claggy, heavy curried rice dishes the world over. Some of the starters are comparatively one-note. And the desserts, as you'd expect, aren't really the point. But if you can accept the cost, Trishna will deliver every time. The vibe Quietly confident south Indian fine-dining establishment, masquerading as a 'normal restaurant'. The drink We tried two signature cocktails (aamra negroni and shimoga gimlet). Both were exceptionally well made and balanced.
