Latest news with #Hockney
Time Out
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
These are the best exhibitions to see in Paris right now
News Your ultimate guide to the must-see art shows and exhibitions in Time Out's recently-crowned best city for culture Craving a proper dose of art? No matter the season, Paris serves up a banquet of exhibitions so rich and varied it can be hard to know where to tuck in. But thankfully, you've got us on hand to help. We've roamed the city to handpick the crème de la crème of exhibitions on display right now – whether you're into painting, photography, contemporary art, sculpture, or design, there's something on this list for you. Here are the very best exhibitions on in Paris right now. Dans le Flou – Another Vision of Art from 1945 to Today Following their deep dive into the link between Impressionism and abstraction, the Orangerie is now exploring what happens when things get a little... blurry. Inspired by Monet's late masterpieces, the show journeys from the 1940s to today, demonstrating how artists have embraced visual ambiguity, abstraction, and indistinct forms to create emotion and tension. The exhibition opens with a quote from Grégoire Bouillier's novel The Orangerie Syndrome: 'In truth, we see nothing. Nothing precise. Nothing definite. One must constantly readjust one's sight.' And that's exactly what this show makes you do – look again, and again. Where? Musée de l'Orangerie When? Until August 18 2025 Matisse et Marguerite – A Father's Gaze We all know Matisse as a heavyweight of twentieth-century art, but how well do we know Marguerite? More than just a muse, she was an essential emotional and artistic presence in his life – and this beautifully curated exhibition finally gives her the spotlight. With over 100 works, including portraits, sketches, sculptures, and intimate archival materials, this show paints a vivid portrait of a deep and complex father-daughter bond. It's about love, creativity, and the quiet power of presence. Where? Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris When? Until August 24 2025 David Hockney 25 Let's be honest: David Hockney doesn't need much of an introduction, but even for superfans of this British icon, this exhibition is quite something. Not only is it the largest Hockney retrospective to date, with over 400 works spread across the entire Fondation Louis Vuitton, but the man himself was deeply involved in every aspect of its curation, from theme to layout. The epic, career-spanning exhibition journeys all the way from the 1960s to Hockney's latest digital experiments, so if you only go to one show this spring, make it this one. It's bold, brilliant, and very, very Hockney. Where? Fondation Louis Vuitton When? Until August 31 2025 The Paris of Agnès Varda You might know Agnès Varda as a Nouvelle Vague pioneer, filmmaker, feminist icon, and general queen of cool. But before the camera rolled, she was behind another kind of lens – as a professional photographer, trained and certified, with a practice that started even before her first films. This exhibition explores the Paris captured by Varda's camera from the 1950s onward: her neighbours, her streets, her studio. It's a tender and powerful tribute to a city she loved. Where? When? Until August 24 2025 The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville is a career-defining image, but Robert Doisneau was so much more than one iconic snap, and that's exactly what this rich, personal exhibition proves. Curated in part by his daughters Francine Deroudille and Annette Doisneau, the show reveals a man driven not just by aesthetics, but by empathy. It draws from a staggering archive of over 450,000 negatives, not just showing us Doisneau's images but sharing the way he saw people. Expect warmth, wit, and moments of unfiltered humanity. Where? Musée Maillol When? Until October 12 2025 Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler Before designer collabs were all over Instagram, they were rare, risky, and revolutionary. Case in point: Azzedine Alaïa quietly created pieces for Thierry Mugler in the late 1970s, and this show traces their creative crossover, starting with the unforgettable tuxedo designs from Mugler's 1979-80 collection. It's a love letter to craftsmanship, mentorship, and the kind of fashion storytelling that shaped an era. Tucked inside the Fondation Alaïa, this show is a must for couture lovers and fashion nerds alike. Where? Fondation Azzedine Alaïa When? Until June 29 2025 WAX Sure, wax fabrics are striking and vibrant — but they're also deeply political. This thoughtful, two-level exhibition dives into the colonial, cultural, and economic history behind one of Africa's most iconic textiles. All part of the museum's 'Migrations' season, WAX uncovers how this cloth became a symbol of identity and resistance across continents, featuring contemporary works, fashion, and archival material. It's a reminder that behind every pattern is a story worth telling. When? Until September 7 2025 Along the gold thread – Dressing from the Orient to the Rising Sun Forget trendy, bulky chains – gold has been a fashion staple since the dawn of civilisation, and this dazzling exhibition explores humanity's obsession with golden garments, all the way from ancient Mesopotamia to Japan's Edo period. Over-the-top? Absolutely. But it's also deeply researched and incredibly, well, rich. Expect robes woven with gold threads, religious vestments, ceremonial wear, and pieces that truly shimmer with spiritual – and literal – weight. Where? Musée du Quai Branly When? Until July 6 2025 Expo Disco: I'm Coming Out The idea? Disco meets installation art. The execution? A bit hazy, but it's fun. Visitors are welcomed by a molecule of ether shaped like a disco ball, courtesy of Jeanne Susplugas, and while the conceptual threat of the exhibition is a little hard to follow, there's glitter, music, and the undeniably dazzling energy of disco liberation. Where? La Villette When? Until August 17 2025 Fashion takes the spotlight in the Louvre's first-ever major clothing exhibition. Covering nearly 9,000 square meters, Louvre Couture places over 100 looks from 45 designers (think Chanel, Gaultier, Marine Serre) in dialogue with the museum's most historic pieces. The result? Sometimes breathtaking, sometimes baffling. But it's an ambitious swing – and one that puts fashion back in its rightful place: at the heart of art history.
Los Angeles Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
My father photographed David Hockney and his mother in the ‘80s. It's an image I haven't stopped thinking about
I ask my students: What would an essay be like if it were structured like a grid? What would it be like to structure it as a lopsided, organic shape? I am teaching a class called 'On Collage.' Every time I do, we make a new center of gravity for the course together. One or two students will explain collage each week, introducing a collage or an artist, but first I offer my own version: a slideshow I have no notes for. Depending on the way I've prepared for class that week, I'll compose a narrative about the slides in a way that articulates what collage might offer us. The slideshow begins with a black-and-white photograph of a man with light hair, a cap and glasses standing behind a tall rattan chair where an older woman is seated. She smiles broadly, her chest puffed out like a robin in early spring. His face is a bit more fluid, untraceable, tucked into itself, echoed by the arm he holds across his body, drawing his striped tie askew. His glasses hold a reflection that must include the photographer, but when I zoom in, the shadow and light become a bunch of shapes, and I get distracted by an unsettling look in the man's eyes, which have an air of surprise or warning. His ears are quotation marks. His mouth is as close as a mouth can come to a sideways question mark, punctuated by a cautious smile line. I've watched enough documentaries to know that this is as likely a response to the photographer as it is to the woman whose shoulder he is grasping with his other hand. David Hockney and his mother. In the 1980s, my father, Lester Sloan, was a photojournalist for Newsweek magazine assigned to photograph Hockney for a story about artists designing posters for the 1984 Olympics. Hockney made a poster of a swimmer underwater, captured through 12 Polaroid photographs arranged in a grid. Swimming figures ripple through Hockney's early paintings as if swimming from one frame to another. When I read from an essay that I wrote on Hockney's swimming pools once, two scholars wondered aloud about John Cheever's 'The Swimmer,' and I am often haunted by this moment, as if I should have known better than to write about swimming pools without reading more things great men had said about them. But what I notice now, looking literally over my shoulder as if I'll see the memory, is that the essay as a genre favors the unique thread of one person's associations. As Hockney puts it, 'We always see with memory. Seeing each person's memory is a bit different. We can't be looking at the same things, can we?' Art offers or asks us to sketch a thing that has moved through us too quickly to capture it completely. It should throw a shadow of chemical memory across our faces like the smell of chlorine. On the day he took this photograph, my father went to Hockney's California home, tucked into the Hollywood Hills. The artist wanted to show him the Polaroid collages — what he coined 'joiners' — he had begun to make. My father has recalled Hockney's sense of wonder at this new approach to artmaking so many times over the course of my life that I can see it — the sun-lit table on which Hockney laid those pieces. Hockney has said that he was so distracted by the joiners that he couldn't sleep at night. 'I used to get up in the middle of the night and sit and look at them to find out what I was doing,' he told Paul Joyce. He bought thousands of dollars' worth of film and roamed his own house in search of compositions. 'Time was appearing in the picture. And because of it, space, a bigger illusion of space.' Some of the photographs are arranged in a grid, though the dissonance between them — one square depicting a table from inches away, another from across the room — creates an ethereality, a wind within the frame. Some of the photographs are arranged freely, as if to follow the line of sight as it traces figures in a space — wind-scattered. Overlapping, stuttering, arcing upward. When I first asked my father about this day, he recalled the degree to which Hockney oriented toward his mother when he came to take this portrait. The painter was orbiting her, asking her thoughts on the conversation, nodding toward her with his body. At this point in the slide show, I show some frames from the film 'Blow-Up,' wherein a London photographer snaps some pictures of a couple kissing in the park. As he develops the film later, he tries to zoom in more and more on a particular frame. He realizes that there is a man with a gun in the bushes. There is, perhaps, at the heart of every composition, the door to a great mystery you might not even have realized you were bracketing. The Hockney joiner that most haunts me is called 'My Mother, Bolton Abbey.' This is not a grid but a scatter. The same woman my father met that afternoon is seated in a cemetery, and the Polaroids of her begin to spill downward, giving the whole frame a gravitational pull. Hockney's sister describes their mother in the documentary 'David Hockney: A Bigger Picture': 'She was a very great power. She had a very great emotional power that's a bit hard to describe. That pulled you in.' When I recently ask my father about the portrait he shot of Hockney and his mother, he begins to reminisce about his own late mother sitting on the porch of the house where he grew up. He recalls a man who would visit: 'I asked him once, 'What's the deal with you coming around here, hanging around my mother?' He said, 'You know, when I was in jail, my mother died, and they wouldn't let me out to come and see her. So I picked somebody to be a mother to me, and it was your mother.'' The image he took of Hockney has become a hall of mirrors, an entrance into the very notion of what a mother means. What it means to lose her. The next slide is a quotation by Roland Barthes about his own mother in 'Camera Lucida': 'I dream about her, I do not dream her. And confronted with the photograph, as in the dream, it is the same effort, the same Sisyphean labor: to reascend, straining toward the essence, to climb back down without having seen it, and to begin all over again.' In the first essay I wrote about collage, I talked about how they have an air of mistake. Like spilling something. Capturing the weird way that one moment is every moment, which is also death. Or as Hockney puts it in the 'The Bigger Picture,' 'It's now that's eternal, actually.' I am writing this while visiting Santa Monica, which exists through the collage of memory since I left years ago. The first thing I do when I get here is drive through my old neighborhood, hungry to see the way time and distance have warped the familiar contours of buildings and trees and streets that served as the entirety of my early childhood world. I enter into my old neighborhood with a fluttering in my periphery where new construction or paint camouflages lines and angles and patches of scenery until the unmistakability of my childhood street reveals itself. I look for the jade plant in front of our apartment building, whose leaves I would press with my thumbnail while waiting for my parents to come downstairs. I look for the grate that would make a cha-choonk sound as the car passed over it on the way into the garage, signaling home when I was a child asleep in the backseat. I weep my ugliest, snottiest cry at an awkward intersection, looking for the place where Blockbuster used to be, happy that the library is still there. Parsing which businesses remain. Which left turns are the way I left them, framed by the corner of a blue-gray building I can only see when I'm dreaming. Even though many of Hockney's joiners were taken in his own California home, they blur with our own family photographs. They are the slippage of places and people, the grief you can feel for the way someone's face was held by a particular slant of light only moments ago. If you tear yourself away from a place too quickly, the maw of memory will ask you to re-leave it over years and years. My students and I end the semester by reading a book where poems and essays and operas arrange themselves across the page like children on a preschool floor. Some cup, some rove, some cascade. Aisha Sabatini Sloan is an essayist and the author of four books, including 'Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit' and 'Captioning the Archives,' which she co-authored with her father, photographer Lester Sloan.
Time Out
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
£19 tickets to David Hockney's ‘Bigger & Closer' at Lightroom - London
Highlights Experience 60 years of Hockney's art through stunning large-scale projections in the heart of London Cutting-edge laser projection and immersive audio system Tickets from £19 When and where? April 30 - June 29, 2025 at Lightroom, Kings Cross Time Out says Famed for his contribution to the pop art movement of the '60s, painter, stage designer, and photographer David Hockney takes us on a personal journey through 60 years of his art in a fascinating immersive exhibition. Using large-scale laser projection and a cutting-edge immersive audio system in a remarkable new eight-metre - tall space in King's Cross, the English artist shows us the world through his eyes, with commentary on his process , and a specially composed score by Nico Muhly. This experience is a true celebration of his use of photography, polaroid collages and much more . Box office & ticket enquiries Time Out offers@ Monday to Friday | 9.30 am - 5.30 pm Lightroom tickets@ | 0300 303 4216 Monday to Friday | 9.00 am - 8.00 pm Saturday | 10.00 am - 8.00 pm Sunday and Bank Holidays | 10.00 am - 6.00 pm Need to know Please note this offer is subject to a strict no refunds or exchanges policy. Please ensure you are booking for the correct date before purchasing. This is valid for a ticket to 'David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)'. This booking is only valid for your selected date/time option. Start time: 10 am to 7 pm (entry times may vary per day). Upon arrival at the box office, please present your booking confirmation barcode to the Ticketing Desk (adjacent to the front doors) for your tickets to be printed off prior to going downstairs to the main ticket scanners. Please note the barcode can't be scanned by itself from your mobile device. This exhibition has a timed entry, please ensure you arrive in time to enter the slot on your ticket. Your entry slot runs for 30 minutes after and is inclusive of the time on your ticket – for example, if your ticket is for 3 pm, you can enter any time from 3 pm until 3.29 pm. One complete loop lasts approximately 50 minutes. You are welcome to stay for longer. For further information including frequently asked questions, please see here. Location: 12 Lewis Cubitt Square, London N1C 4DY. Tickets cannot be cancelled, amended, exchanged, refunded or used in conjunction with any other offer. For full terms and conditions, please see here.
Forbes
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
David Hockney In Paris: The Largest, Most Joyful Exhibit Worth The Trip
David Hockney, Untitled, 22 July 2005. Oil on canvas. 'David Hockney 25,' the just-opened exhibit at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, is the largest to date of the British artist featuring more than 400 works, including some never seen before. A once-in-a-lifetime experience that certainly merits the trip to Paris and already numbered among the blockbuster exhibitions of the year, it is also a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Fondation Louis Vuitton and will be open until August 31. Opened at its entrance by an appropriately hopeful slogan in pink neon in these times of turmoil and uncertainty — 'Do remember they can't cancel spring' — the Hockney exhibition is an experience that connects visitors with the world through an array of joyful, colorful, inspiring paintings, i-pad drawings and sometimes spectacular videos. A Year in Normandy, chair, David Hockney, 2020 'Inside and outside the soaring spaces of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, everything is in bloom, a joyful vision and a record of a life in art lived with passionate curiosity, attention to the human condition and reverence for the natural world,' the New York Times enthuses in a review. It's the most extensive retrospective ever dedicated to the 87-year-old painter, featuring works from 1955 to 2025 and that, despite its sheer amount, as Le Monde's critic writes that 'you find yourself thinking it's not enough.' The Guardian's critic found the the show 'so moving, I had tears in my eyes.' David Hockney, Play Within a Play Within a Play and Me with a Cigarette, 2025. Acrylic on canvas with collage. This exceptional exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal, former director of the Royal Academy in London, has been organized according to the artist's choices and instructions, and in addition to a major collection from his studio and his foundation assembles loans from international, institutional, and private collections. It includes works created using a wide, delightful and often astonishing variety of techniques — oil and acrylic paintings, ink, pencil, and charcoal drawings — as well as digital works across photographic, computer, iPhone, and iPad devices — and immersive photo and video installations. Apple Tree 2019. Acrylic on canvas. David Hockney, 27th March 2020 'He himself chose, after presenting some of his legendary early work, to open the exhibition with the last 25 years' production, thus offering an immersion in his world, spanning seven decades of creation,' the Louis Vuitton museum explains. 'He wanted to personally follow the design of each sequence and each room.' As described by Le Figaro: 'This painter, so English down to his bold pate and colorful attire, navigates with a touch of impatience in his 'electric chair,' gazing longingly at the hanging of this dazzling exhibition. His two nurses bring him his coke, but he lights his beloved cigarettes alone, with the same dandyish gesture he's always had. Vitality lurks like a volcano not yet extinguished.' At the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris' Bois de Boulogne, the explosion of colorful, relatable, joyful and immersive works illuminate the 12 rooms dedicated to the show, communicating the artist's joie de vivre and bringing smiles of delight - and sometimes even gasps - to observers. It's the satisfaction of remembering that nature offers infinite inspiration, if one simply looks. David Hockney: A room of portraits in many different styles, welcomes visitors. David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 "David Hockney 25" shows the constant renewal of the artist's subjects and modes of expression and his exceptional ability to reinvent his art. Initially a draftsman, then a master of all academic techniques, he is today a champion of new technologies. Born in 1937 in Bradford, an industrial town in northern England, Hockney started painting at a young age, his creative universe spanning seven decades that make him one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a preamble, the exhibit starts with emblematic works such as the Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, and his series of double and single portraits. Then, nature assumes an increasingly important place in Hockney's work from the 1980s to the 1990s before his return to Europe. The core of the exhibition concentrates on the past 25 years, spent mainly in Yorkshire, Normandy and London, a celebration of the landscape, the spectacular explosion of spring and the changing seasons to culminate with the winter landscape Bigger Trees near Water or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, 2007, loaned by London's Tate Museum. David Hockney, Bigger Trees near Warter, 2007.' Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Acrylic on canvas. During the same period, David Hockney painted friends and relatives in acrylic or on iPad while also working on self-portraits. The exhibition features some 60 portraits shown alongside his 'portraits of flowers.' Created on a digital tablet but displayed in traditional frames, the works have an intriguing effect. This is evident in Looking at the Flowers (Framed), 2022, where they are shown together on the wall. David Hockney, 25th June 2022, Looking at the Flowers. Photographic drawing printed on paper Seeing them in that painting and then recognizing them hung around the room radiates joy to visitors of all ages. Hockney is a reliable 'porteur de bonheur ' with his blossoming trees, multicolored flowers and vibrant landscapes. 'You can learn a lot in this exhibition – not just about photography and the human eye but art history and perspective' writes the Guardian's reviewer. 'He show us how beautiful the world is in spite of those who try so hard to ruin it.' David Hockney, 24th February 2021, Red, Yellow and Purple Flowers on a Blue Tablecloth. iPad painting printed on paper, mounted on aluminium David Hockney, 30 Sunflowers, 1996. Oil on canvas. 'Day after day, season after season, the artist captures the light variations,' the curators explain. 'A series of acrylic paintings is on display featuring a highly singular treatment of the sky, animated by vibrant touches, that subtly evoke the work of Van Gogh.' The final room on the top floor feels more emotional in its joyful cornucopia of color. It unveils David Hockney's most recent works, painted in London, where he has lived since July, 2023. These enigmatic paintings are inspired by Edvard Munch and William Blake: After Munch: Less is Known than People Think, 2023, and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think, 2024, in which astronomy, history and geography cross paths with spirituality, according to the artist. Here, also, appears 'Play Within a Play Within a Play and Me With a Cigarette' (2025) , his latest self-portrait in his London garden painting the same image we see, as the daffodils around him announce spring. David Hockney: After Blake: Less is Known than People Think, 2024 Giverny by DH, 2023. Acrylic on Canvas. Nearing the end, new works are placed that engage the spectator in a video at the artist's studio, transformed into a dance hall where musicians and dancers are regularly invited to perform. Passionate about opera, Hockney also reinterprets the set designs he has been creating since the 1970s in a spectacular new multimedia, polyphonic creation where visitors are immersed in a musical and visual piece. David Hockney 25 is at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, until August 31. Tickets are available here.
New York Times
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
It's Springtime in Paris for David Hockney
Inside and outside the soaring spaces of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, everything is in bloom. 'Do remember they can't cancel the spring,' reads a pink neon sign above the museum's entrance — a hopeful phrase that the English artist David Hockney sent to his friends, along with a drawing of daffodils, during the coronavirus pandemic. The foundation's exhibition, 'David Hockney 25' is the painter's largest to date. While its title indicates a focus on his most recent 25 years of work, it feels like an overview of his whole career. It's a joyful vision, and a record, of a life in art lived with passionate curiosity, attention to the human condition and reverence for the natural world. Born in 1937 in Bradford, an industrial town in northern England, Hockney started painting at a young age and impressed locals with a 1955 portrait of his father. The small canvas, tightly composed and painted in muted tones, is a far cry from the huge, raucously colored works that have come to define Hockney's oeuvre. But it brims with a painstaking humanity, captured in his father's alert expression, his tightly clasped hands and his energetic posture. This work opens the exhibition, whose first two rooms lead viewers through Hockney's quick, and frankly astonishing, evolution as a painter. Works he made in London during the late 1950s and early '60s mix styles and aesthetics with abandon. Pop mingles with postwar European 'art informel'; graffiti and collage stray into surrealist critiques of domesticity. Even as homosexuality was illegal in the Britain (it was decriminalized for men over 21 in 1967), Hockney painted relationships between men. 'Berlin: A Souvenir' (1962) shows a hedonistic abstraction of male figures — nude, in silhouette, about to embrace — merging and indistinct as forms. 'Two Men in a Shower' (1963) and 'Boy About to Take a Shower' (1964) show their subjects in intimate moments, naked bodies rendered in impressionistic flesh tones, as if colored by emotion or desire. When he lived in Los Angeles, from 1964 to 1998, Hockney produced some of his best-known portraits: romantic pairs, erotic interiors and outdoor scenes painted with clarity, bathed in soft California light. A 1968 painting, 'Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,' shows the writer Isherwood and his partner in matching armchairs. Bachardy's head is turned toward Isherwood, in a scene of stunning tranquillity that mixes loosely painted figures with detailed surroundings. 'A Bigger Splash' (1967) has the same beguiling flatness and Los Angeles palette, but here the figure has disappeared, and we see only its wake. A giant spray of water rises from the otherwise placid surface of a blue pool. We never see who plunged in just seconds before. The essence of Hockney's work is the attempt to capture the animating force of life — in the faces of friends and loved ones, or in a blossoming tree, changing season or night sky. Just before the turn of the century, Hockney moved back to Yorkshire County, where he grew up. He stayed for a little more than a decade, turning his eye to the familiar, inexhaustible landscape of his childhood. In these paintings, hills roll, roads twist and turn, trees shed and sprout foliage, fields are golden and russet patchworks, light illuminates dense forests in otherworldly crimson and fuchsia. A series of paintings of hawthorn trees in blossom show the flowers surging in dense, roiling masses, pouring along the roadside. A wall text for 'Hawthorn Blossom Near Rudston' (2008) describes Hockney's obsession with the hawthorn's annual blooming, which arrives unpredictably at a moment he calls 'action week.' At its appearance each year, no matter where he was at the time, the artist would drop everything to return to Yorkshire and paint the bountiful white flower, frothing, Hockney has said, like 'champagne poured over everything.' Despite their British settings, the otherworldly hues and writhing lines of works like 'Felled Trees,' 'Bigger Trees Near Warter' (both 2008) and 'Untitled No. 2 (The Arrival of Spring)' (2011), recall the Post-Impressionism of Vincent Van Gogh, or the symbolism of Maurice Denis. Both artists, like Hockney, believed that nature possessed infinite inspiration, and that any single view holds within it the entirety of the world: One must simply look. A room of portraits hung salon style presents the human figure as equally compelling. The walls teem with faces and forms painted in wildly different styles, a testament to Hockney's range as well as his sensitivity. In 'Charlie Scheips' (2005), the subject, an American curator, leans casually against a wall, the lines of his body painted energetically with a realist, Alice Neel quality. 'Margaret Hockney, 14 February 2013,' shows Hockney's sister, carefully sketched in charcoal. The artist himself peers out at us from 'Self Portrait, 20th June 2022,' customarily bespectacled and dressed in flashy attire, a wry smile on his face as if to say, 'I'm still here.' Hockney's lavish attention to surface and detail make the exhibit's transition to his many 'iPad paintings,' his computer drawings printed on paper, and his oddly conceived 3-D drawings somewhat jarring. A collection of 220 iPad works called 'Four Years in Normandy' (2019-23) are the most persuasive: A room of prints big and small, as well as screens with shifting images, harness the restlessness of the pandemic lockdown years, and show Hockney working at great speed en plein-air. A grid of 15 self-portraits from 2012 is likewise affecting — a reminder that the self, too, is relentlessly fluid. In other parts of the show, Hockney's use of technology seems random at best, or lazy at worst, if only because most of his work is so considered and exquisite. A trio of ungainly 'photographic drawings' from 2018 are effectively experiments in Photoshop. Each shows a large room filled with people sitting or standing, sometimes in conversation, sometimes lost in contemplation. The technological process used to model each figure, a wall text says, forces us to observe them more closely, 'unlike traditional photography.' Another text, for a video of roadside foliage made with multiple cameras, compares the work to Dürer's botanical studies. Maybe. Or maybe not. But alongside these forays, Hockney is still, fortunately painting. The exhibit ends with a series of new works inspired by Edvard Munch and William Blake, both of whom painted transcendent visions of the world. 'Play Within a Play Within a Play and Me With a Cigarette' (2025) shows Hockney in his London garden. He is hard at work on a version of the very image we see before us. Though the trees are still bare, the daffodils, to his left are in bloom. It must be spring.
