The painter who captured the soul of L.A.

David Hockney showed the beauty in the ordinary. The celebrated British artist, who emerged from swinging-’60s London to take sunny Los Angeles as his muse, turned everyday vistas—a lamp, a swimming pool, rain on a window, his dachshunds lounging on a rug—into striking, playful images rendered in vibrant color. Over seven decades he demonstrated his creative force, working on canvas, paper, and iPad; making films and photo collages; and designing theater costumes and opera sets. Openly gay when homosexuality was still outlawed in Britain, Hockney was a stylish figure in British society, a chain smoker sporting bleached-blond hair and owlish spectacles, immensely popular with the smart set. The Guardian once dubbed him “British art’s first pop star.” As a painter, he found inspiration all around him. “I can look at a little puddle on a road and the rain falling on it and think it’s marvelous,” he said. “I see the world as very beautiful.”

Hockney was born into a working-class family in “England’s grimy industrial north,” said The Washington Post. Showing “precocious talent,” he won a scholarship to a local art school and then attended London’s Royal College of Art, where his work took the school’s gold medal. Upon graduating he found success quickly, selling out his first exhibition at a “trendy London gallery.” A 1961 trip to New York “established his lasting attraction to America” and its relative sexual liberation, said The New York Times. When he visited Los Angeles a few years later, he was smitten. In 1964 he settled in the Hollywood Hills and began turning out paintings that captured the city’s “sun-soaked atmosphere” and “nouveau riche leisure life,” featuring images of swimming pools and sunbathing men.

In later years “his focus shifted back to Europe” and nature, said The Wall Street Journal. He returned to his native Yorkshire to paint expressionist landscapes, and for a time rented a home and studio in rural Normandy, creating digital paintings of the changing seasons. Throughout his life he was hugely admired, with “blockbuster exhibitions” of his work drawing record crowds. In 2018, his 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) sold for $90.3 million, then a record for a living artist. Hockney maintained a dogged work ethic well into his 80s, painting for up to seven hours a day, yet he saw it not as labor but a privilege. “Pleasure and joy” were the purpose of his art, he said. “And joy is a great thing to give to people.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.