{"id":101070,"date":"2025-04-09T13:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=101070"},"modified":"2025-04-11T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:47:10","slug":"david-hockney-grazia-usa-spring-2025","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/david-hockney-grazia-usa-spring-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"David Hockney Makes a Bigger Splash"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),<\/em> 1972. Photo Credit: \u00a9 David Hockney Photo: Art Gallery of New South Wales\/Jenni Carter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since its opening in 2014, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has hosted many blockbuster retrospectives featuring some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art including Mark Rothko, Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman. But this spring\u2019s David Hockney 25 <\/i><\/a>exhibition, opening today, is the first time the Paris museum has invited a living artist to take over its entire building. The prolific 87-year-old British painter will transform the sweeping Frank Gehry-designed 126,000-square-foot glass-sailed structure in Bois de Boulogne with more than 400 of his works in a variety of media including oil and acrylic paintings; ink, pencil, charcoal, and iPad drawings; and immersive video installations. Offering visitors a rare insight into his seven-decade career, Hockney has chosen to focus on the past 25 years while also including a selection of iconic early works.<\/p>\n

According to independent curator Sir Norman Rosenthal, a friend of Hockney\u2019s since the 1960s and a co-curator of the exhibition, Hockney\u2019s strength is his breadth. \u201cDavid Hockney\u2019s not a conceptual artist in the way that Picasso wasn\u2019t a conceptual artist,\u201d says Rosenthal. \u201cHe\u2019s a bottomless artist because he paints what\u2019s in front of him. He\u2019s able to translate what he\u2019s looking at in an extraordinary, amazingly varied way,\u00a0<\/span>whether it\u2019s an art-historical reference, the wall of a gay club, or a beautiful apple tree in Normandy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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David Hockney, 27th March 2020, No. 1,<\/em> 2020 Photo Credit: \u00a9 David Hockney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By way of introduction, the exhibition will open with Hockney\u2019s 1955 portrait of his father, a rare example of his juvenilia, along with two of his best-known works, the erotically charged California swimming pool paintings Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) <\/i>from 1972 depicting a nattily dressed gentleman watching another man do the breaststroke, and A Bigger Splash <\/i>from 1967, which shows a shimmering surface disturbed by an unseen swimmer who has just dived in. This section also highlights intimate double portraits of two creative couples: fashion designer Ossie Clark and textile designer Celia Birtwell and author Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,<\/em> 1968. Photo Credit: \u00a9 David Hockney Photo: Fabrice Gibert<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hockney\u2019s decision to focus the exhibit on recent work made in Yorkshire, Normandy, and London came out of a conversation with his partner and studio manager Jean-Pierre Gon\u00e7alves de Lima. \u201cOne day in the studio JP said, \u2018The exhibition is going to take place in 2025, why don\u2019t we just concentrate on the last 25 years?\u2019\u201d Rosenthal recalls. \u201cFor somebody my age\u2014I\u2019m 80 and I\u2019m sure he feels the same\u2014 we\u2019re a quarter of the way into the 21st century and 2000 feels as though it was yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landscapes took on an increasingly prominent role in Hockney\u2019s oeuvre during this period, as he began timing his annual trips from his adopted home of Los Angeles back to Yorkshire to catch the creamy white hawthorn blossoms that appear in May. In 2005, he moved back full-time, settling in the seaside town of Bridlington, about 75 miles from the city of Bradford where he was born. Hockney later spent the Covid pandemic years in the French countryside, and now lives in London. His love for nature is manifested by a monumental winter landscape Bigger Trees near Warte<\/i>r (2007), a 15 x 40-foot painting comprising 50 canvases that is the largest work Hockney has made to date, and a new installation of the 220 for 2020 series, <\/i>a collection of 220 daily iPad drawings celebrating the arrival of spring in Normandy. But he hasn\u2019t forgotten genre painting and portraits entirely: The show features 60 recent portraits of friends and relatives painted in acrylic or on iPad that Hockney calls \u201cdrawings,\u201d as well as iPad still lifes that he calls \u201cportraits of flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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JP and Little Tess, 15th November 2023,<\/em> 2023, 19th March 2021, Sunflower with Exotic Flower,<\/em> 2021. Photo Credit: \u00a9 David Hockney Photo: David Wilkinson, \u00a9 David Hockney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even at his advanced age, Hockney isn\u2019t slowing down much. \u201cEvery day David gets up, he dresses very well\u2014you know, he puts on a tie and one of these smart suits, which were made from him by a tailor Normandy\u2013and then he paints,\u201d says Rosenthal. Among the most intriguing works in the exhibition are the enigmatic symbolist painting After Munch: Less is Known than People Think<\/i> and After Blake<\/em>, completed last year, which Rosenthal describes as \u201cWilliam Blake\u2019s vision of Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy <\/i>as seen through the eyes of David Hockney, with Virgil entering first hell and then of course wandering through and getting to paradise in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

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After Munch: Less is Known than People Think,<\/em> 2023. Photo Credit: \u00a9 David Hockney Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though less well known among the works in his vast oeuvre, Hockney has long created his own versions of canonical works dating from antiquity to the present day. The last room will feature his dialogues with artists including Fra Angelico, Vincent Van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso, along with his most recent unseen self-portrait.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA\u2019<\/em>s Spring Issue<\/a> featuring cover star Paris Hilton<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n