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The Kunstmuseum Luzern is showing the first Swiss retrospective of the popular British painter David Hockney. Portrait of one of the most expensive contemporary artists.
It was 2018 when David Hockney’s painting “Portrait of an Artist” was sold at auction. The picture fetched what was then the most expensive price for a work by a living artist: $80 million, not counting the commission for the auction house.
The image of a swimming pool was typical Hockney. After all, the Brit moved from gray London to sunny Los Angeles in the early 1960s and was fascinated by the pools and palm trees there and Californian physical culture.
Fascinated by water
According to his own statement, one of his great challenges as a painter was to paint water in such a way that it looks realistic. Hockney spared little effort for this. For the picture “Portrait of an Artist”, for example, he photographed the scenery from all possible perspectives in order to then reproduce the picture with the right light reflection.
Legend:
Hockney’s painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” – here in the Tate Modern in 2017 – shows, like many of his works, a swimming pool.
IMAGO/ZUMA Press
The artist also moved to LA because of his homosexuality. Homosexuality was illegal in England until 1967. Although Hockney was already successful as a young man and was soon celebrated as a respected artist in the “Swinging Sixties”, he only addressed his gayness in his art in coded form.
In his “Teapaintings”, for example, he mixed his feeling of repression with England’s national drink: a male body is enclosed in a pack of the typical British tea brand “Typhoo” – advertising as art equals Pop Art.
Legend:
In his works created in California – for example here in his illustration “The Beginning” – Hockney addressed his queerness more openly.
©David Hockney
Master portrait artist
Hockney then showed the peak of his painterly skills in portraits of his friends and his parents. These double portraits skillfully capture both the relationships and the inner life of those portrayed.
In “My Parents”, for example, which can also be seen in Lucerne, Hockney shows his very idiosyncratic father deep in a notebook. The mother, on the other hand, is very open and looks straight at the viewer.
Portrait pictures of David Hockney
The portrait “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” shows the newly married couple Clark. He a famous fashion designer with a cat, she standing next to fresh lilies. One stands for attachment, the other for death. A year later, the two were divorced.
Model Picasso
Hockney has repeatedly made detours in the direction of Pablo Picasso. He was particularly interested in the break with central perspective, as was common in Cubism.
This is what some of his interiors and flower paintings on display in Lucerne suggest. Like most of the pictures, they come from the Tate Modern collection, with which the art museum worked together last year.
Legend:
Hockney’s still lifes, inspired by Cubism, can also be seen at the retrospective in the Kunstmuseum Luzern.
© David Hockney / Tyler Graphics Ltd. Photo: Richard Schmidt
Willing to experiment into old age
When Hockney returned to his native Yorkshire in old age, he also began to paint outdoors. Since these landscapes were up to 20 meters long, he also used computer technology to assemble the individual canvases into large formats.
Similar to how photography used to be a central tool in his painting, contemporary gadgets such as the iPhone and iPad have become his new brushes in recent years for depicting landscapes.
Legend:
David Hockney likes to use technical aids for his plein air paintings. This is also the case for “Bigger Trees near Warter or / ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique” from 2007.
©David Hockney
To this day, for the 85-year-old, it’s all about crossing the line between abstraction and figuration. Every means is right for him.
The British artist manages to remain innovative into old age. This is also shown by the successful exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Luzern. If you want to find out why Hockney is one of the most successful painters of all time, you shouldn’t miss it.
Radio SRF 2 Kultur, cultural news, July 8th, 2022, 5:20 p.m.