David Hockney's career: so much more than outrageously good mood

David Hockney is currently listed as the 20th greatest artist in the world ranking list by ArtFacts

On Hockney's 75th birthday in 2012, he was still ranked No. 36; however, the British painter was celebrated with so many exhibitions of his works that at that time he was also counted among the three to five most important artists on earth.

The celebrations for his 80th birthday in 2017 surpassed even this.

Even the rankings of the very biggest names can still change significantly – however, anyone who has been among the top 100 artists in a globally recognized ranking for an extended period is certainly one of the world's leading artists who significantly shape the art world. Like David Hockney , who has consistently ranked quite high in every contemporary art ranking since around 1965.

The first part of this series on the world-renowned artist demonstrated and explained that David Hockney is not, and never was, a Pop Art painter, even though this style is frequently attributed to him. The following section will focus on David Hockney's career – again providing an opportunity to dispel widespread and oversimplified portrayals of this influential artist:

David Hockney didn't make his career in America; he was already famous in art circles when he arrived there. Hockney didn't just paint beautiful pictures, but worked very successfully in a wide variety of artistic disciplines

New art, still in old England

In 1959, David Hockney applied to the Royal College of Art in London, hoping to transform his purely academic training in Bradford into the development of his own style. Like any young free spirit, Hockney found the colorful, free-spirited Pop Art from the USA fascinating and had very good personal reasons to distance himself from it, to the realm of ironic yet life-affirming social criticism.

However, the seriousness with which he pursued his artistic work did not allow him to surrender himself so willfully to the beautiful, colorful art world of the latest US Pop Art, as some depictions seem to suggest.

Hockney first had to take a long, old-world detour: Until the end of his studies in 1962, Hockney worked as determinedly as he did continuously on his own visual language; he wanted to find or invent a completely new expression between abstraction and figurative representation.

He had already experienced his first conflicts with the subject matter in Bradford, but hadn't yet abandoned it during his time there. At the RCA, he initially focused exclusively on seeing and emphasizing the image as a surface. This striking characteristic of Hockney's early work at the Royal College of Art (hello, Sandra Blow, see Hockney Part 1) was a very deliberate pictorial strategy that would become a decisive step for the artist.

Studying in the heart of London's cultural and artistic scene, and working and discussing with fellow students who were equally interested in new paths and means of expression, offered Hockney ample opportunity to engage with the various art movements of his time and to develop his own visual language in this learning process.

The first approach to abstraction was expressive cardboard paintings in an abstract style such as “Growing Discontent” (1959, image not available), although the title itself already indicated Hockney’s aversion to a merely gestural expressive style of painting à la Alan Davie and Jackson Pollock .

Hockney abandoned these abstract paintings after a few months because he realized that for him the path to modernity could not consist of putting on a new stylistic straitjacket called Pop Art instead of the restrictions he had painstakingly shed through the rigid rules of traditional “royal art”.

Hockney wanted more: a personal voice; an elegant, new compromise between abstraction and figuration, something not to be found in the trendsetting art of the fashionable Americans. Therefore, Hockney preferred to draw inspiration once again from European artists, many of whom had long been attempting to mediate between abstraction and figuration.

During his visits to exhibitions in London in the spring of 1960, he discovered Francis Bacon (Hello, Sandra Blow), whose figurative painting became Hockney's first important source of inspiration.

Furthermore, Hockney found inspiration in Jean Dubuffet's seemingly primitive "Art Brut," Brassaï the first graffiti photographer , who had already collected images of Parisian murals in the 1930s.

The idea brought Dubuffet resounding success; during Dubuffet's documenta period (three consecutive appearances: 1959, 1964, 1968), his figure-tableus framesd by primitive script or composed of living letters ( “Vertu virtuelle” ; “Hopes and Options” ) were seen as “anarchy in its most beautiful form” virtually everywhere modern art could be found.

For Hockney, these were crucial impulses; he felt a strong connection to Dubuffet's depictions, which straddled the line between children's art and ancient Egyptian high culture , and saw in this "anonymous style" ("Davis Hockney" by David Hockney 1976, p. 67) an essential model for his work during his time at the Royal College.

never lose what a student from Seoul (emphasized by herself) calls “European emotional or figure-focused tendency” in her philosophy dissertation at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich about David Hockney’s early work,

Perhaps it was precisely this insistence on European artistic traditions; Hockney's hesitancy, like his British colleagues, to immediately embrace innovative American styles in order to free himself from Europe's artistic tradition, that led to an oeuvre of "global art" which was able to inspire people on all continents.

Good young art even has a chance in old England

Towards the end of his studies at the Royal College of Art, Hockney developed his first unique style of expression, and with this he became famous very early and very quickly in his home country:

In 1960, the talented Mr. Hockney was invited to the annual exhibition of the “London Group” . The London Group is a London artists' association that remains active to this day, founded in 1913 as an avant-garde opposition to the conservative Royal Academy of Arts; its stated aim is “to promote public awareness of contemporary visual art through annual exhibitions”.

The Royal Academy of Arts in London is the art institution in Great Britain dedicated to the promotion of painting, sculpture, and architecture since its founding by George III, commissioned by the monarch. George III reigned from 1760 to 1820; from 1765 onward, he is said to have shown the first signs of the mental illness that overshadowed the second half of his reign; the Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768…

The venerable Royal Academy was probably not blessed with the most refreshing spirit long before Brexit times; the idea of ​​showing young art by (even gay) college students like David Hockney in one of its celebrated summer exhibitions was simply unthinkable.

How far behind the times one is as an RA (Royal Academician) can be seen, for example, in the fact that David Hockney himself was only elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1991 – at which time he was 54 and had been a famous artist for 30 years.

This report by the “Guardian” Grayson Perry, who at 58 is no longer exactly young , saved the summer 2018 exhibition (the 250th anniversary of the Academy) from its “dumbed-down self,” according to the Guardian journalist, by presenting the surprised British art establishment with a wild collection of trash art.

In contrast, the London Group delights in its exhibitions then as now with the stylistic diversity that the entirety of young artists who were not noticed or rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts bring to the annual exhibition.

David Hockney exhibited again soon afterwards, and this Young Contemporarys exhibition of 1961 at the RBA Galleries London became famous for making Royal College students Patrick Caulfield , Derek Boshier , Allen Jones , David Hockney, RB Kitaj and Peter Phillips famous at a stroke.

“Young Contemporaries” “New Contemporaries” in 1974 also a British organization that aims to support emerging artists at the beginning of their careers. It was founded by David Hockney's teacher, Carel Weight.

In 1949 he had the idea of ​​using the barely used gallery of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA, another British artists' association founded in 1823 as a counterweight to the sleepy Royal Academy) in London's Suffolk Street to exhibit student work .

No sooner said than done, and the founders also agreed to select the exhibiting “Young Contemporaries” in such an impartial and democratic process that it could almost be called un-British: The artist applies anonymously with a work of art; the jurors do not learn the school, age and nationality of the participant during the entire selection process.

In the decade since its founding, the annual Young Contemporaries exhibition had already earned a reputation for showcasing the most exciting new art of the time. By the early 1960s, the Young Contemporaries exhibition had become a must-see for connoisseurs of contemporary art, and global citizens with an appreciation for modern art made sure not to miss the spectacle.

The 1961 exhibition was a resounding success, especially for the discerning art connoisseurs, who eagerly seized upon the new British Pop Art and, above all, the early works of David Hockney. These exciting new discoveries were discussed and passed around, and David Hockney gradually became a topic of conversation in the avant-garde art scene.

A gallery owner finds his artist

This 1961 Young Contemporarys exhibition also featured John Kasmin , a young rebel from London's East End who had recently been expelled from New Zealand by the police (as a Bohemian) and had been working in London galleries since his return.

“Doll Boy” by the unknown student David Hockney (now in the Tate collection) at the Young Contemporaries Show in 1961 Marlborough Gallery in New London. After work, Kasmin invited Hockney for tea, liked him, and wanted the painting so badly that he was prepared to confront his boss and Marlborough Fine Art co-founder, Harry Fischer.

Kasmin wasn't allowed to choose according to his own taste/instinct at the gallery anyway, so he resigned (to the disappointment of the Marlborough founders, who had already recognized his potential) and took the gallery's most important client with him.

This Sheridan Dufferin, whose full name was Sheridan Frederick Terence Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was accordingly wealthy. Dufferin provided the funds for the founding of the Kasmin Gallery, which occupied unusually large, bare white premises on London's New Bond Street and hosted David Hockney's first solo exhibition in 1963.

Hockney immortalized Kasmin in 1963 in the painting “Play within a Play” ( curiator.com/art/david-hockney/play-within-a-play ) “as a prisoner between life and art” , so he probably already knew back then what a lucky find a gallery owner like John Kasmin was, who believed in art and didn't just want to sell things.

The reaction to Hockney's first solo exhibition at the Kasmin Gallery in London was tremendous; David Hockney became a star at the venerable Royal College of Art. The young man, previously described as exceptionally shy in "royal circles," now showed his first signs of rebellion (but continues to be described as engaging, delightful, and by no means calculating).

Amidst all this early fame lay Hockney's college degree, which he apparently did not complete fully – according to John Kasmin , he refused to write an essay or similar, therefore did not receive the usual gold medal and instead bought himself a gold lamé jacket.

Presumably, Hockney was more interested in the “Drawing Prize” he won in his final year. It came with a prize of 100 pounds, which Hockney promptly spent on a trip to New York, Berlin, and Egypt to gather inspiration for illustrations.

Hockney is said to have returned from this trip bright blond, more self-confident, and more extravagant. Like many of his fellow artists, he was not particularly fond of the social climate in the United Kingdom at the time: homosexuals were still subject to life imprisonment under the penal code, though they were no longer prosecuted since the Wolfenden Report of 1957.

According to Kasmin, Kitaj, Blow and others who had already traveled around the world, there was more exciting art “out there” than wallpaper paintings by John Minton, mosaic landscapes by Julian Trevelyan and the “horrible little drawings” ( quote Kasmin) by Lucian Freud.

In general, Hockney found the weather too bad, the country too nationalistic (hello Brexit), and many people too narrow-minded and grumpy.

Out of the confines

In every “proud nation with a glorious history,” there lurks the temptation to treat the foreign and the different with disrespect. The narrower the horizon, the more is perceived as different; independent artists whenever their work deviates from mainstream tastes, and people with unusual sexual orientations even more so.

Modern, civilized societies combat such tendencies; unattached free thinkers have always tended to join the nations where this struggle is most successfully waged at any given time – for most young artists in post-war England, large red arrows pointed towards America.

Five of the six fellow students who had become known together with Hockney in the Young Contemporarys exhibition in 1961 ended up more or less quickly in the USA after graduating from the Royal College of Art; only two of them later returned permanently to England:

Ridley Scott received a one-year travel grant to the USA in 1963 and worked for two years at Time Life, Inc. with documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. In 1965, he returned to England to complete a production design course at the BBC, which led to his entry into the directors' training program.

In 1968 he left the BBC to found Ridley Scott Associates, making it one of the most successful advertising film houses in Europe and from there launching his well-known career as a director.

Allen Jones and Peter Phillips lived in New York from 1964 to 1966 and traveled extensively throughout the USA. Jones then moved to Germany (taught at art academies in Hamburg and Berlin, participated in documenta III in 1964 and documenta 4 in Kassel in 1968) before returning to his native France. Peter Phillips remained internationally active, teaching in Birmingham and Hamburg, exhibiting his work worldwide, and traveling as far as Africa and Australia. He currently lives in Mallorca.

After graduating, Derek Boshier

The only native-born American, RB Kitaj, taught drawing at the Ealing School of Art, Camberwell School of Art and Slade School of Fine Art in London until 1967, participated in documenta III in Kassel and the Venice Biennale in 1964, and only returned to the USA in 1965 after nine years of exile on the occasion of his first American exhibition at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery in New York.

Hockney made his escape in February 1964: During his first major trip into the world, he had met Henry Geldzahler, the then curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who was known for his commitment to young artists and had encouraged Hockney to move to Los Angeles.

They had been waiting for talents like Hockney: In the same year, Hockney had his very successful first US solo exhibition at the Alan Gallery , and in the summer of 1964 he received a teaching position at the University of Iowa.

Hockney's adopted home in the USA , however, became Los Angeles. He was thrilled with sunny California ; no wonder, when one briefly considers where David Hockney had lived previously:

Hockney's hometown of Bradford was at an ecological and architectural low point in the 1950s and 60s, following an even more inglorious past: in the 19th century, Bradford had risen from a rural market town with a few thousand inhabitants to an industrial city with over 50 coal mines and the "wool capital of the world".

The cityscape featured inadequate workers' housing, military barracks, and textile factories whose 200 chimneys constantly belched black, sulfurous smoke. Around 1850, Bradford was the dirtiest city in England, with cholera and typhus being frequent occurrences, and the average life expectancy of its inhabitants was eighteen years.

Bradford suffered little damage during World War II, but restructuring and redevelopment by authorities full of aesthetic duds may have destroyed Bradford's historic face even more thoroughly.

When David Hockney was growing up there, Bradford consisted of ugly buildings and chaotic streets full of unsecured construction sites and uniform tenement blocks with football pitches without a trace of greenery in between; the houses were blackish-brown and ugly and the air was still grey.

John Kasmin visited him once or twice a year in the USA; a photograph of the two of them from 1965 was taken in the USA when they were visiting an exhibition of the new London painting scene at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis with artist acquaintances from England.

Kasmin grew up in comparatively idyllic circumstances in the London borough of Whitechapel, opposite Bradford, and from the age of 17 spent six years immersed in the "pure countryside" of New Zealand. Against this backdrop, it's understandable that the gallery owner recalls with a touch of irony how enamored Hockney was with every detail of the laid-back Californian lifestyle; Hockney would even have dragged him along to Disneyland…

From Hockney's perspective, however, California is the most logical choice in the world: free, inspiring (Pop) Art instead of royal restrictions, sun instead of drizzle, wide horizons instead of narrow street canyons, swimming pools in greenery instead of gravel-covered sports fields, cheerful and well-built boys (with bare torsos) instead of serious masculinity in suits and ties… and that an overflowing abundance of the latest technical gadgets called Disneyland fascinates a modern artist should be the last thing that surprises a gallery owner working in this field.

First bloom under the California sun

The time of his departure into freedom was also the time in which David Hockney found his first own visual language : clear, cool forms, objective manner, focus on processing the new experiences, which were carefully secured with the equally new Polaroid camera for reflection.

For Hockney, the ideal painting medium for this phase was the newly invented acrylic paint; the “Shower Pictures” , “Swimming Pool Pictures” and “Domestic Scenes” impress not only with their colors and expressiveness, but also with their adoption of the latest developments that the time had to offer.

The latest technological developments translated into art, in an individual language with great colors and clear motifs, without incomprehensible academic, intellectual or psychological entanglements and messages – this combination touched and enchanted many lovers of modern art and quickly also people who were simply looking for beautiful art and/or trendy art with high utility and decorative value.

Hockney really took off in California; and that was the start of an artistic life whose intensity can make the viewer dizzy:

Between 1965 and 1967, Hockney received and fulfilled teaching assignments at the University of Colorado in Boulder and at the University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley, San Francisco.

In 1966, Hockney created his first stage design for London's Royal Court Theatre and Alfred Jarry's surrealist play "Ubu Roi," marking the beginning of numerous stage designs. Today, David Hockney is known to many contemporaries "only" as a painter, but he was so extensively active as a stage designer, photographer, and graphic artist that these arts rightfully claim him as well.

In 1968, Hockney spent the summer at home in England and traveled with friends to Paris, the South of France, Cornwall, and Northern Ireland. In the autumn, he accompanied his still relatively new love, the Californian art photographer Peter Schlesinger, to London, where Schlesinger intended to enroll at the Slade School of Art.

Then he went on to St. Tropez, where he visited “Le Nid du Duc” and took extensive photographs – the dreamlike home of director, screenwriter, producer “Tony” Richardson (1964 4 Oscars for “Tom Jones”, Hotel New Hampshire, Phantom of the Opera ff.) would later play a role in his art.

“On the side” he painted some of his most famous pictures ( Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy ; American Collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman ) and participated in documenta 4 in Kassel.

A marathon career with endless bursts of speed

This pace continued: in 1969 Hockney accepted a visiting professorship at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts; he repeatedly went on longer journeys, which were combined with work and experiments and extended stays in the respective corner of the world.

For example, in 1975 he spent an extended period in Paris with his parents, who were also extensively portrayed. Also in 1975, Hockney incorporated the research he had conducted in the early 1960s for the etching cycle of William Hogarth's "The Rake's Progress" into a stage design for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in East Sussex, where Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" was being performed.

In addition, entirely new artistic ideas continually emerged, for example, from 1976 onwards, photo collage works, each composed of many Polaroid images. “Twenty Photographic Pictures” and the composition made up of 63 Polaroids featuring the sisters Imogen and Hermiane Cornwall-Jones were well received at the time, again representing a unique approach against the prevailing fashion trends.

Today, these works are often presented as an expression of "Cubist phase" and attributed to a late engagement with Cubism and Picasso's work ; however, Hockney had already begun this engagement at the Royal College of Art.

In 1977, Hockney's work was featured at documenta 6, in 1978 at the 38th Venice Biennale, and in 1979 at the 3rd Sydney Biennale; in 1978, Hockney designed the stage set for Mozart's "The Magic Flute" at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in East Sussex.

In 1980, Hockney designed the sets and costumes for a triple tribute to French art of the Picasso era at the Metropolitan Opera House. The opulent work, titled Parade, comprised the ballet "Parade" with music by Erik Satie, the opera "Les mamelles de Tirésias" with a libretto by Guillaume Apollinaire and music by Francis Poulenc, and the opera "L'enfant et les sortilèges" with a libretto by Colette and music by Maurice Ravel. In 1981, he designed another triple set of sets for the Metropolitan Opera: Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps," "Le Rossignol," and "Oedipus Rex."

From 1982 onwards, new Polaroid collages appeared, even more multifaceted (even more cubist?), a play with a wide variety of formats and principles of composition and order.

In 1983, Hockney worked simultaneously for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera and the Royal Opera House in London, and created stage designs for the Eye and Ear Theatre in New York. For the exhibition “Hockney Paints the Stage” that same year, he also completely redesigned the stage set for the opera “L'enfant et les sortilèges,” a work that can still be admired today as a permanent installation at the Honolulu Museum of Art.

In 1985, Hockney participated in the XIII Biennale of Paris, and in 1986, he participated in PaperArt (1st International Biennale of Paper Art in Düren, Westphalia), certainly with new experiments; in 1987, he designed the stage set for Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde" commissioned by the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

From the mid-1980s onwards, Hockney had immersed himself more in painting again, this time primarily studying Henri Matisse (and Pablo Picasso, repeatedly).

Soon a few technical innovations were ready for processing, and from the end of the eighties Hockney experimented with printing, color copiers, and fax machines – resulting in four-color copy prints, fax drawings and abstract computer graphics, the new body of work known as “ Home Made Prints” .

In 1989, David Hockney exhibited his work at the 20th São Paulo Biennial in Brazil and was awarded the Japanese Praemium Imperiale . This was the first time this "Nobel Prize of the Arts" had been awarded; Hockney shared the prize in the painting category with Willem de Kooning (first prize winners in the other categories: sculpture Umberto Mastroianni; architecture I.M. Pei; music Pierre Boulez; theater/film Marcel Carné).

From 1991 onwards, Hockney again designed stage sets, for Puccini's "Turandot" at the Chicago Lyric Opera and for Richard Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten" in 1992 at the Royal Opera House in London; in addition, he was admitted as one of the members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1991.

In 1994, Hockney designed costumes and sets for twelve opera arias in Mexico City as part of Placido Domingo's television program Operalia. Once again, he utilized the latest technological developments, constructing complex 1:8 scale models in a movable proscenium measuring 1.8 m x 1.2 m, employing a computer-aided setup that allowed him to program lighting effects at will and synchronize them with the musical soundtrack.

In 1995, Hockney participated in the 46th Venice Biennale; in 1997, he received the British Order of the Companions of Honour (an order of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth that has honored outstanding achievements in various fields since 1917) and was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2004, his work was shown simultaneously at the Liverpool Biennale and the Whitney Biennale in New York City.

In 2006, after a thorough study of the methods of the old masters, his book “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters” was published; in 2012, Hockney created a large-scale painting of 176 square meters for the Vienna State Opera, which formed a highlight of the “Iron Curtain” exhibition series as part of the “museum in progress” in the 2012/2013 season.

In 2012, Hockney received the Order of Merit from the Queen (a British order for outstanding military, scientific, artistic, and literary achievements) – which he accepted, having declined a knighthood from the Queen in 1990 (see bbc.com ); he also participated in the 4th Madrid Biennale of Contemporary Art; as well as in 2015 (at the age of 78) in the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art…

David Hockney turned 80 in 2017 tate.org.uk/whats-on/ ). The San Francisco Opera reconstructed and revived Hockney's stage design for Turandot in 2017, for which Hockney was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal.

This wasn't even the beginnings of a biography, just a quick overview of a few key moments in Hockney's life. Besides all this travel, research, teaching, and experimentation, David Hockney has primarily created art; enough art to over 306 solo exhibitions and almost 900 group exhibitions … there aren't any official statistics on this yet, but many artists certainly haven't reached the 1000-exhibition mark.

The third part of this series focuses on the renowned visual art of David Hockney – but not exclusively, as world-renowned artists like David Hockney provide the world with many other inspirations…

Here's a selection of his works on Pinterest:

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