Parker Cars Magazine: Issue 4

david hockney
Circle Line and do laps of the Tube, sleeping until
the galleries opened. Then, still half-asleep, they
would visit as many exhibitions as possible, before
hitchhiking back to Yorkshire.
Below: A Lawn Being
Sprinkled (1967).
Right: Model with
Unfinished Self-Portrait
(1977).
Royal College of Art
At the RCA in London in the late 1950s, Hockney
finally felt the confidence to come out as a gay man.
His painting blossomed as a result and he managed
to secure his first dealer, John Kasmin.
First New York visit
Hockney flew to New York City for the first time in
1961. A random viewing of a TV advert for a hair dye,
with the catchphrase “Is it true blondes have more
fun?” prompted him to go blonde himself. It was a
look that soon came to define him.
First love
In 1966, while teaching art at UCLA, Hockney fell
in love and moved in with a young student, Peter
Schlesinger. It was during this period that he
produced some of his most famous paintings such
as A Bigger Splash and, later, Portrait of An Artist
(Pool with Two Figures) (both previous page).
Stage design
In 1974 Hockney was asked to work on the stage
design for Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress,
for the following year’s Glyndebourne Festival.
“When you’re working suddenly in another field, you
are much less afraid of failure,” he told art historian
Marco Livingstone in the 1996 book David Hockney.
“You kind of half expect it. So therefore you take
more risks, which makes it more exciting.”
So began his career-spanning work in set design
for both ballet and opera. Hockney claims that a
neurological condition called synesthesia – which
causes music to trigger the visualisation of colours –
has influenced his work in this area.
Some days were just glorious,
the colour was fantastic. I can
see colour. Other people don’t
see it like me, obviously.”
Relocation to LA
Not long after the death of his father, in 1978,
Hockney decided to make Los Angeles his
permanent home. A year later he was living up in the
Hollywood Hills. The long, twisty roads, the canyons
and the views across the valleys had an obvious
effect on the subject matter of his paintings.
Photography
In 1982 the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris
proposed an exhibition of Hockney’s photography.
The artist started experimenting with composites
using photographic prints, eventually culminating in
his famous photo-collages of the Grand Canyon.
Machined art
The mid-1980s saw Hockney using an office
photocopier to create his first home-made prints.
It was the start of his fascination with the use
of machines in art. He later used fax machines,
computers, digital cameras, laser-jet printers and,
more recently, iPads to create artworks.
Back to Yorkshire
In 1997 Hockney discovered that his old friend
Jonathan Silver was dying of pancreatic cancer. To
be close to him, Hockney moved back to Yorkshire,
to the town of Bridlington, where his mother lived.
During the summer he would regularly drive across
the Yorkshire Wolds to visit Silver. “Going to see my
20 where to, parker?