All Joy that the British painter David Hockney has poured over us since 1955 has now been gathered in Paris

On the facade of the Louis Vuitton Fondation (FLV) in Paris, this spring and summer is a statement by David Hockney in letters of pink neon. « Do Remember They Can’t Cancel the Spring« There is triumphant between the silver sails on the building of Frank Gehry. Hockney made this remark for the first time in 2020, during the first Corona-Lockdown. Since then it has become a winged statement by the British painter. Bernard Arnault, leader of the world’s largest luxury company Moët’s Luxewig Moët’s decisionMay we always remember the optimism of your words: do remember they can’t can’t cancel the spring.  »

Mmm. Such a statement can also shout completely different things. What was the name of that book with which Rachel Carson in the early 1960s, when Hockney put his first steps on the path to total painter’s fleem, put the environmental movement in VLAM? Silent Springas a reference to the birds that did not whistle but died thanks to the use of DDT and other agricultural poison. « They« Can indeed abolish spring.

So much for the knee ear. Because inside you can only be defenseless against the paintings of Hockney. « Does it spark Joy?« Is another recent winged statement, this not from Hockney but from cleaning guru Marie Kondo, and the work of Hockey is all joygeparkin all the halls of the ship that Gehry laid here; As a kind of Ark of Noah, it all collects it Joy He has poured Hockney over us since 1955. Take, for example, the paintings that he has made in Yorkshire and later in Normandy since the late 1990s, on which straw bales of that round, mechanically formed straw bales populate fields. Nostalgia is not necessary; Hockney saw the Joy of those things. Not an insignificant world, as Nescio ever wrote, because landscapes also change, but incorruptible pleasure in showing it.

Britishness and QueNness

Hockney is now 87 and has already made a good number of exhibitions in recent years that could have been the last one. Who knows it is this one; With more than 400 works it is at least the largest. Hockney can be called the Elton John of the visual arts. Immensely talented, never glued to an avant-garde, eccentric dressed, an icon of Britishness and queernness that has made unforgettable work but is never taken seriously in all circles.

Hockney needed only one modernist building and three palm trees to have both abstraction and irony and melancholy sing around

This exhibition is mainly about the last 25 years of his production, but fortunately starts with two rooms filled with Greatest Hits from the sixties and seventies, including a few of his swimming pools, portraits and interiors, with the witty Some Neat Cushions on a Couch (1967), which indeed shows a couch with pillows, a luxury and a carpet (and a piece of houseplant), and the same witty and great Savings and Loan Building (also 1967). Hockney needed only one modernist building and three palm trees to let both abstraction and irony and melancholy sing around. What a party. Striking are the paintings of male nude in the shower from the sixties, a time when sexual contacts between men were still punishable in the UK.

In his own way, Hockney has always experimented with new media, including with fax machines and polaroids; The exhibition hangs above the masterful photo collage PearBlossom Highway From 1986, one of his many play with perspective. According to Hockney, painters had always experimented with technology; He made a lot of work that painters have been using obscura and other optical instruments since the early Renaissance with a camera, now known as the Hockney-Falco theory, about which he published a book about in 2001, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. In the FLV are on The Great Wall (2000) See small reproductions of old paintings to convince us.

iPad and iPhone

Hockney himself started to paint on the iPhone and the iPad very soon after their appearance. For a few years he made a still life every day on such a screen and e-mailed it to friends. They also saw others and that was a pleasure that caused your own screen to light up every time. Spezzatura. The FLV is now full of it, but then printed out in large format and sometimes hung on the wall as a painting. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. The prints lack the brightness of the screens. No joy but soup. Or is it just getting used to? Fortunately, he still makes paintings, including a large sun and a self -portrait in a garden in London, on which daffodils announce the arrival of spring, the most recent work at the exhibition. Hockney paints himself in this garden while painting himself while painting himself, a Droste effect in which we want to stay. Hockney Forever. And his glasses is also yellow.

Much better than the iPad painting prints works the room in which Hockney’s sets for operas are housed. You can lie on large cushions and from all four walls are bombarded with now animated designs for operas from the seventies and eighties, from Stravinsky, Ravel, Wagner, Puccini. The animations have been taken from David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away)one supervised by the master himself immersive experience which was shown in London in 2023. Usually such immersive exhibitions are made about long -term artists – Van Gogh, Monet, Klimt, Kahlo, Dali, etcetera – sieved the adventure from their work until a few style characteristics remain. But Hockney is still alive! Perhaps Hockney always keeps alive. No, that is not possible. Really not?

<dmt-util-bar article="4896117" data-paywall-belowarticle="" headline="Alle Joy who has poured out the British painter David Hockney since 1955, has now been collected in Paris  » URL = « https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/06/06/alle-joy-die-de-britse-childer-david-hockney-sinds-1955-over-ons-Heeft-is-nu-verzameld-in-parijs-a486117 »


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