#hockney

David Hockney 1937 – 2026 David Hockney in his studio with some of his work, circa 1967 Photograph: Tony Evans/Timelapse Library/Getty Images

Little fires everywhere, Dan Oliver

DAVID HOCKNEY IN A BIGGER SPLASH (1973)

The Meeting (or Have a Nice Day, Mr. Hockney) Peter Blake Date: 1981 - 1983

we are pouring one out for David Hockney. even if he had as good and full and beloved a life as one could hope for, this one is hitting me hard. one of the first artists whose name I knew (Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy was on my bedroom wall as a child) and almost definitely the first living artist. most important british painter since Turner and tbh one I always prefer to see in galleries. a body of work that told me incredibly compelling stories about queer hedonism and quotidian queer life, an eye for colour that is to this day incomprehensible to me as a chronically monochrome person, a constantly art-historical but newly creative approach to formalism. I love his work with photomosaic perspectives which is always compared to cubism but also feels to me like byzantine art reanimated through photography, one of the most archetypally radical modern technologies. with his later work he was probably the single most significant advocate for digital painting as a fine-art method. an icon and archetype of the kind of working-class creativity and excellence that defined postwar britain and decades of vandalism towards the state and the arts means we can't really nurture any more. I may not have grown up to be an artist like I thought I would looking at Mr and Mrs Clark but I will make something for you.

Hockney in paris with one of my best friends, where we spent hours sitting on the floor of the gallery looking closely at paint textures

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/arts/design/david-hockney-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.plA.9cjI.NwhYVnOC8_yn&smid=url-share