60 DAVID HOCKNEY EXHIBITION
‘SOMETHING WONDERFUL is happening’, posters promoting the National Gallery in London declared, and this was true. Only it was happening in Paris. On show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton
in the Bois de Boulogne, the building of glass sails designed by Frank Gehry, is the biggest- ever Hockney exhibition. With 456 works, David Hockney 25 is one enormous splash. Hockney writ large. No expense has been spared to bring it all together – transport and insurance costs would be hard for any other institution to shoulder. Hockney’s greatest hits from 1955 onwards that he personally selected are here together with most of the work produced in the past 25 years. We travel with him from Bradford, to London, to California, back to Yorkshire, to Normandy, and finally back to London. It is an exercise in self-revelation, a hit not of nostalgia but of emotion for the artist and for visitors. Tis is the authorised version: he does not expect to witness a similar show again. Commenting on the exhibition, Hockney
said: ‘When I started preparing for this exhibition almost two years ago, I felt it was important to review several bodies of work through the years to curate a representative selection for the public. Te show means an enormous amount to me because it is the largest I have ever had… I have chosen to concentrate on the past 25 years, inspired by the time I have spent in Yorkshire, Los Angeles, Normandy and London. Some of my most recent paintings are included, and I do think it is a very enjoyable and visually interesting survey of works. ‘Not many artists have been drawing
similar themes and the same people for more than 60 years. What I am trying to do is to bring people closer to something, because art is about sharing. You wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.’ ‘No English artist has ever been as
popular in his own time, with as many people, in as many places.’ Tis was art critic Robert Hughes’s view in 1988 and it is still true of Hockney today. After a lifetime of unshakeable self-belief, the golden boy of British art has maintained the kind of celebrity usually reserved for film stars, but rarely visited upon serious artists. With his hair and his glasses and his voice the fame machinery kicks in. It has never been turned off. And no one seems to begrudge the artist his success. He is a national favourite. His talent and his unflagging, indefatigable industry, his technical versatility and immense skill, as printmaker, photographer, set-designer, draughtsman, theorist… all alongside being a great painter. He is a user- friendly modernist, an unthreatening prince of visual charm, always displaying a perfect alliance of form and content. Tere are red rooms, and cream rooms,
blue rooms, green rooms, yellow rooms and plenty more. Marco Palmieri’s studio in
Clockwise from right The exhibition is on until the end of August; Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968; Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972; immersive video installation
Milan was responsible for the exhibition design. ‘To define the wall colours for the Fondation’s galleries, I selected tones outside David Hockney’s typical colour palette – hues that could visually interact with his works through assonance. Tese are deep, subdued shades – intentionally muted and complex, designed to emphasise, by contrast, the expressive power of his art: a soft yet intense red, a dark green with bluish undertones, and a rich but restrained yellow. My aim was to ensure the artworks remained central, avoiding a neutral or conventional display. I wanted to highlight the separation between
the visual language of his paintings and the surrounding space.’ However brightly the rooms are painted,
there is a problem with being involved in curating your own show: it is almost inevitable that you include too much. Plus, there is a sense that here is an older man in conversation with his younger self. Nevertheless, it is a show of encounters. He is the man in the crowd, who sees everything, and has an eye for every detail, capturing the animating force of life – in the faces of friends and loved ones, in a blossoming tree, a change of season or a night sky. And it is memory-making: about stockpiling the
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