hockney...

Our family has had something of a passion for Hockney’s art for several years now (eg. #hoctober: Hannah has been posting Hockney-inspired images each October on her social media pages).
So, you won’t be surprised that Moira and I spent Monday evening watching the David Hockney documentary on Sky Arts. It proved to be a rather lovely 90 minutes of television. It was the first in a four-part series - conversations between Hockney and Bragg, filmed over 12 months in both London and at the artist’s Normandy studio, plus archival footage and commentary from distinguished ‘Hockney fans’ allowing a chance to review his work over the past SEVEN decades (he’s now 86 and I think he sold his first painting – of his father – for £10 in 1955)(I wonder where it is now?)*.
Remarkably, he’s had more than 400 exhibitions over the course his lifetime (including 3 solo shows in 2023!) and, of course, he hasn’t finished yet because he shows no sign of slowing down. It was a reminder of the incredibly range of his work – which includes designing stage sets for opera, photography, stained glass, drawings and paintings… using a whole range of different technologies and traditional techniques.
Leaves me a little fazed by just how boring predictable I’ve become in MY old age!
Well worth watching if you can.

* a subsequent documentary revealed that Hockney bought the painting back several years later.