january-2012

WOLDGATEWOODS&NOVEMBER©DAVIDHOCKNEYPHOTORICHARDSCHMIDT
PRIVATDIARY
‘I get intense pleasure from my eyes’
David Hockney talks to Steve Handley about his
exuberantly colourful landscapes at London’s Royal Academy
‘ANYARTISTWILLTELLYOUTHEWORKTHEYDID
yesterday was their best,’ says Hockney of his exhibition of
recent landscapes at London’s Royal Academy. Th e artist is
on sparkling form as ever: dour, wry, supremely northern.
Nevertheless, these vast, luminous canvases of unassuming
English lanes, woods and fi elds need no hard sell; they’re his
fi nest work since his 70s heyday. Some 150 pieces – from
wall-fi lling oils on multiple canvases to blow-ups of sketches
done on his iPad – are on display as part of the London 2012
Festival, the city’s cultural side dish to the Olympic Games. ‘I
couldn’t give a monkey’s about the Olympics,’ says Hockney
with fl at disdain and fl atter vowels. It’s heartwarming that
nearly a lifetime in the Californian sun hasn’t weakened the
Yorkshireman’s propensity to call a spade a spade.
Despite making his home among the swimming pools
and palm trees of the Hollywood Hills, Hockney has always
spent a good bit of time at his mother’s home in Bridlington,
on England’s fresh north-east coast. Since 2004 he has made
the surrounding countryside the focus of his work. ‘It’s the
landscape I know from my childhood. It’s mainly hidden
small valleys, few rivers in them. Not many people would
Thirteen
think it’s that unique – but then there’s not many people. At
my age, it’s a terrifi c subject. People leave you alone.’
At 74 Hockney is immensely charming and self-assured,
as you would be after over 40 years at the very top of your
game, but he has succumbed to at least two of the faults of age:
hobby-horses and deafness. He bats away questions with wellrehearsed
maxims on how to live well, principal among which
is the pleasure of looking. ‘Most people don’t look very hard,’
he says. ‘To see colour you have to look, to think about it. I love
looking at the world. I get intense pleasure from my eyes.’
Th e heightened colour of his work is pleasing and uplifting,
a world of rich pinks, vivid greens, blues and mauves. Hockney’s
landscapes nod to Matisse and Rousseau in their intense fantasy
colours and love of pattern and rhythm, but it’s his English
artistic forebears who provide the emotional history: Spencer’s
dainty pictures of the leafy lanes and red-brick country cottages
of Cookham; Sutherland’s iconic natural forms. He is the
greatest living painter of pleasure – the everyday pleasure to be
found in looking. It’s a gift we could all benefi t from learning.
David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture, Royal Academy of Arts,
London W1, 21 January – 9 April