Remembering David Hockney

Hockney's Looking at the Flowers (Framed), 25th June, 2022

The English artist David Hockney died today at the age of 88 in London.

I was lucky to see an exhibition of his work two years ago at the Palm Springs Art Museum and was in awe of how much work he produced and what he thought was worthy of capturing -- which was everything.

Us in our own version of Hockney's installation

He made his own colourful interpretations of Yosemite Park, a series of photographs of his mother that are pieced together, a long, winding sketch of a country estate, and his famous series of swimming pool works, capturing the moment of a man diving into the water.

I enjoyed one whimsical installation where he painted himself looking at paintings of flowers that he has made and framed on the wall, and then on the other side is a physical representation of the painting, with two chairs, inviting visitors to pose like him.

He made me realise there is art in the everyday, and it can be fun, colourful, and doesn't have to be profound.

A Retrospective of Hockney's Whimsical Approach to Art

Hockney's interpretation of Yosemite

We paid a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum again, after our first visit two years ago. This time the exhibition is on English artist David Hockney and it demonstrates a range of his work not only chronologically, but also in terms of the various mediums he uses.

A photo and painting of sunflowers

Entitled David Hockney: Perspective Should be Reversed: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, the show includes almost 200 of the artist's works in prints, collages, photographs and iPad drawings.

I don't know much about Hockney, save for his colourful, whimsical works, like his swimming pool paintings, and he designed a print for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games of a man diving into the water.

His curiosity in experimenting with new technology, in particular iPads is really interesting, as someone in his late 80s is open to trying new things and seeing if it works for him and his art. For example he did a sketch of Yosemite in his iPad and it could easily be a lithograph, with vibrant green trees in the foreground, and the mountain in the back. He uses various circles, dots, squiggles and scratches to create texture and depth. 

His collage portrait of his mother

Hockey also tries to make art fun and pokes fun at how people think it has to be high brow. In "Photography is Dead. Long Live Painting", he has a photo of a vase of sunflowers in an homage to van Gogh, but next to it is a painted version of the same flowers. 

There's also a portrait of his mother that he made by taking numerous pictures of her at one sitting and assembling the pictures together to create one image. The same goes for a massive collage of the Grand Canyon.

What I liked the most was a giant painting of two of him! Both sitting in chairs with their backs to the viewer, one smoking, the other not at a wall full of his paintings of flowers in vases on checkered tablecloths.

The museum got cheeky and replicated the painting with the same flower paintings framed on the wall, and the included two chairs similar to the ones in the painting complete with a side table and silk rose, and invited viewers to be in their own Hockney work. Quite amusing!

Two Hockneys looking at his flower paintings

David Hockney: Perspective Should be Reversed

Until March 31, 2025

Palm Springs Art Museum

101 Museum Drive

Palm Springs, CA 92262