Greatest David Hockney old and new in massive show
David Hockney 25: Focuses on works of the recent period
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), David Hockney, 1972, Acrylic on canvas, ©David Hockney
Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter
David Hockney
The artistic influence and legacy of contemporary British artist David Hockney are given poignancy in a pivotal exhibition featuring over 400 of his works.
27th March 2020, No. 1 2020, David Hockney, iPad painting printed on paper, ©David Hockney 2020
Fondation Louis Vuitton provided an immense invitation for Hockney to present his artwork throughout the entire building.
The massive scale of the show is a celebratory opus for Hockney, who has been personally involved in the design and layout of the entire display space.
David Hockney 25 exhibition
Titled David Hockney 25, the artworks in the exhibition focus primarily on the recent twenty-five-year period, with ancillary works from 1955 to 2025 also on show, providing relevant context.
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A prodigious artist, Hockney’s works from the mid-twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, including paintings from international, institutional, and private collections and works from his own studio, are on show.
Portrait of My Father, David Hockney, 1955, Oil on canvas, ©David Hockney
Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt. The David Hockney Foundation
The exhibition features his wide-ranging media use, including oil and acrylic painting, ink, pencil and charcoal drawing, digital art and immersive video installations.
The accolade given to Hockney, widely considered one of the most influential and successful British artists, in this solo showing of hundreds of works, is tremendous.
11 rooms of the Fondation Louis Vuitton
Hockney said of this recognition, “This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – eleven rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the very last paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.”
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David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, in 1937. He attended Bradford School of Art and Royal College of Art, where his talent was recognised and his works featured in early British Pop Art exhibitions.
7 Decades of David Hockney
For the past seven decades, he has worked from his homes in the U.S. and the UK. Constantly challenging himself while trying out new media, he has kept a pronounced work ethic, resulting in a continuously innovative and thought-provoking body of work.
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One of his early works, painted in 1955, Portrait of My Father, shows the emergence of his skills for capturing his subject’s likeness and devotion to portraiture.
Single and double portraits
Hockney explored this genre throughout his life and used it to document, sometimes repeatedly, the subjects that infused his life – his family, friends, lovers and acquaintances.
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The exhibition features Hockney’s series of double portraits, including the first of this style, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, painted in 1968.
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, David Hockney, 1968, Acrylic on canvas
©David Hockney, Photo Credit: Fabrice Gibert
In 1964, Hockney moved to sunny California and took up residence in Los Angeles. He was enamoured with the lifestyle there and began a series of vibrantly coloured paintings of swimming pools.
A Bigger Splash, 1967, shows this recurring theme in which Hockney explored the representation of the ever-changing surfaces and reflections of water using fast-drying acrylic paints in vibrant colours.
A Bigger Splash
A Bigger Splash depicts a typical California 1960s era home, with two quintessential palm trees set against a flat turquoise blue sky. Seemingly simple, the challenge was in depicting the momentary freeze of the splash of water, just after a diver entered the pool.
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Hockney’s style of posing two figures in one composition carries over in his thematic paintings of swimming pools in California. In Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, he combines his use of the double portrait within the swimming pool composition.
A Bigger Splash, David Hockney, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, ©David Hockney Tate, UK
The narrative of two distinctly separate figures of a fully dressed man on the edge, gazing over another man swimming in the pool, alludes to the artist’s own personal drama of love and loss.
This very large painting, measuring 2.1 m x 3 m, became Hockney’s signature work when it was sold at auction in November 2018 for an astonishing US$ 90.3 million.
Installation view David Hockney 25 gallerie
It is the highest price ever paid for one of his works and, at the time, the most ever for a painting by a living artist. It was originally purchased in 1972 from a Hockney exhibition in New York for US$ 18,000.
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Throughout his career, Hockney experimented with new media and technology. He used printmaking, photography, and computers to augment his toolbox and complement his creative technique.
English landscape legacy
In the style reminiscent of some of the most renowned English artists, he turned to exploring nature. He began painting landscapes in the 1990s and using his native home of Yorkshire, specifically, as the subject.
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The scenery of Yorkshire forms the core theme, and the bulk of the work featured in David Hockney 25 exhibition. In Hockney’s paintings, he provides a diary of the ever-changing seasons of the environment.
David Hockney friends and relative’s portraits
He documents the continuous flow of nature’s renewal and demise and the variations in the light of spring and the dark of winter. Often using the same view of a road or trees as the subject matter to convey the passage of time.
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His observations are captured in the monumental winter landscape Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, 2007.
Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, David Hockney, 2007, Oil on 50 canvases
©David Hockney, Photo Credit: Prudence Cuming Associates, Tate, UK
The work was created using fifty separate canvases assembled to form a massive 5.5 m x 12 m artwork. Hockney said, “It is very big to take over the whole wall of the Royal Academy”.
With tremendous forethought and planning like a master builder, he devised the construction of the structural foundations for this work.
Winter Timber, David Hockney, 2009, Oil on 15 canvases ©David Hockney, Photo Credit: Fabrice Gibert
Awesome in size, it still allows for easy dismantling, transportation and installation of the colossus in a gallery.
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In Hockney’s 2009 painting, Winter Timber, he uses potent colours in dark hues to heighten the drama of freshly cut logs set against the dead trunk of a tree, a totem he features in many of his other works.
Juxtaposition of life and death
The patterns and the juxtaposition of the dark palette of green, blues and purples stand vividly and hauntingly over the brightly hued logs – an allusion to life and death.
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In contrast to the sombre and cool colours of these winter scenes, Hockney’s May Blossom on the Roman Road, 2009, of a hawthorn bush alongside an orange road, explodes with spring’s bright light and renewal – a reprieve given to nature with the passage of time.
May Blossom on the Roman Road, David Hockney, 2009, Oil on 8 canvases, ©David Hockney, Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt
Digital artworks created by Hockney are on display in a spectacular installation. He has used the applications on his iPad to create drawings quickly. This has allowed him to capture mood and colours into images immediately.
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He noted that he can establish and create a drawing with subtlety quicker than in any other media he has worked with before.
Installation of landscapes capturing day after day, season after season, David Hockney
Hockney found it a terrific innovation for showing luminous subjects, such as a sunrise. The installation of these works shows how he can expeditiously document a landscape day after day, season after season.
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From his early Pop Art explorations to his groundbreaking digital landscapes and profound late-career meditations, Hockney’s commitment to artistic innovation is powerfully underscored by this exhibition.
After Munch: Less is Known than People Think, David Hockney, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, ©David Hockney, Jonathan Wilkinson
This monumental exhibition showcases his enduring legacy of challenging visual conventions and embracing new technologies, revealing an artist in constant dialogue with art history and the human experience.
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His recent works, drawing inspiration from masters like Munch and Blake, culminate in a pensive yet expansive exploration of life, spirit, and the very act of seeing.
After Blake, David Hockney, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, ©David Hockney, Jonathan Wilkinson
After Munch: Less is Known than People Think, 2023, and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think, 2024, feature musing on spirituality, astronomy, history and geography.
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These themes fittingly conclude the comprehensive celebration which affirms Hockney’s singular position as an artist whose prodigious life and works creative pursuits have not merely documented but profoundly enriched our shared visual history.
Text Cammy Yiu and photos Fondation Louis Vuitton
