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I dont know what she thought of that.
FULL BLOOMDavid Hockney,27th March 2020, No. 1,2020, iPad painting printed on paper.
The 87-year-old artist looks the way he always has, a bit diminished but jaunty and stylish as ever.
His signature black-rimmed eyeglasses, huge and round, are bright yellow now.
His hair is thinning and white.
Play within a Play within a Play and Me with a Cigarette,2024–25, acrylic on canvas with collage. Courtesy of David Hockney.
I ask him about the End Bossiness Soon button on his lapel.
I was going to put End Bossiness Now, but then I thought that is in itself too bossy.
Theres lots of bossy people around now, more than there used to be.
After Blake: Less is Known than People Think,2024, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of David Hockney. Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson.
He lights a cigarette, somewhat defiantly, and inhales.
The lining of his suit jacket is decorated with images of cigars.
I smoke anything, he says, when I ask him if he smokes cigars as well.
Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique,2007, oil on 50 canvases. Courtesy of David Hockney. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates, Tate, UK.
Ive lived long enough.
The exhibition hes referring toopens April 9 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
I cant wait to go and see it, because he doesnt just hang paintings.
May Blossom on the Roman Road,2009, oil on eight canvases. Courtesy of David Hockney. Photo: Richard Schmidt.
He really takes over a building.
He has the courage to do that.
Hes, in the best sense of the word, very ordinary.
Hes just speaking to himself.
And by speaking to himself, with himself, he speaks to everybody.
He appeals to people without compromising his vision of the world.
The project is a personal one for LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault as well.
Play within a Play within a Play and Me with a Cigarette,202425, acrylic on canvas with collage.
Courtesy of David Hockney.
Hockney has painted Graus portrait twice.
You could see the things that obsess him: colors, first and foremost, Grau recalls.
He made the dark blue of my jacket sharper, the black of the trousers darker.
The dots on my scarfhe painted them all, one by one.
With the chair, you could almost identify every strand of the wicker.
He cant help doing it.
He paints from a wheelchair, and on good days, he can keep going for two hours.
Hockneys own personal motto, not written but adhered to every day, is Love life.
He started a new portrait yesterdayits of Marco Livingstone, an art historian and longtime friend.
Well, I mean, Id always felt it was Picasso I was after, he says slowly.
Im not Picasso, but Picasso did so many things.
His catalogue raisonne is 34 volumes, isnt it?
After Blake: Less is Known than People Think,2024, acrylic on canvas.
Courtesy of David Hockney.
Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson.
He became an artwork himself, a name that registered with people who had never seen his paintings.
Like Andy Warhol, hes more than a celebrity, Kasmin continues.
He couldnt get into a London taxi without the driver knowing who he was.
David was considered one of the best-dressed people in Europe for quite a while.
Hes the only person I know who can wear yellow Crocs to Westminster Abbey.
When Kasmin opened his own gallery in 1963, Hockney was his only figurative artist.
David was always the odd man out in my gallery, he tells me.
But Kasmin was able to sell Hockneys work.
Oil is like flesh, squishable flesh.
Oil is touching, Currin says.
Its sun shimmering off water, half there and half not there.
(Faces are the most interesting things we see, he once said.)
Hockney had come out as gay while he was a student at the Royal College.
David responds to popular culture, which I did too, Ruscha tells me.
But hes entirely different in his approach to making pictures.
Hes an astounding artist in the variety of ways he attacks and makes pictures.
He would scour LA for ideas and it would come out in his work in specific ways.
Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique,2007, oil on 50 canvases.
Courtesy of David Hockney.
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates, Tate, UK.
May Blossom on the Roman Road,2009, oil on eight canvases.
Courtesy of David Hockney.
Photo: Richard Schmidt.
Hockneys work is forever changing.
By the late 80s, the work got much larger and more demonstrative, with bolder and surprising colors.
Hockney continues to paint landscapes, portraits, and still lifes of flowers, but always in new ways.
Since 2010 hes madethousands of iPhone and iPad paintings and drawings.
Hockney remains relevant to many artists, young and old.
I admire Hockney, as I do Holbein, because both artists convey the essential truth without painterly floundering.
There is no liking or not liking when it comes to an artist like Hockney, Peyton continues.
His unwavering communication into the world about what he is seeing is undeniable.
David Hockney is a good looker.
Its nearly 7:30 in the evening and the year-round Christmas lights are on in Hockneys garden.
Its an absurd world, isnt it?
he says, lighting another cigarette, and it looks as though its going more absurd.
