Today, the world mourns the loss of the legendary British painter David Hockney, who died peacefully in his home yesterday at the age of 88. After rising to fame in the early 1960s as a leader of the British Pop Art movement, Hockney went on to become one of contemporary art’s most iconic characters—from his round glasses and ever-present cigarette to his recognizably clever, vivid paintings, spanning both physical and digital media. Whether you go gaga for his glamorous Hollywood Hills watering holes or remain more keen to debate his boundary-pushing iPad drawings, one fact proves universal: Hockney defined generations beyond the one he was born into. At the time of his death, his auction record rendered him the highest valued artist alive.
Only time can reveal how art history will ultimately remember this storied aesthetic titan. In the meantime, however, the art world is taking to social media and the press to pay its respects. I checked in with some of the curators who worked most closely with Hockney throughout his career—as well as a few of the leading artists who are carrying his mantle forth—for a temperature check on their early impressions regarding Hockney’s impact, and his legacy.
Kent, Connecticut-based figurative painter Sam McKinniss shares a clear kinship with Hockney’s portrait practice. “Like many other people, I try to think of David Hockney whenever I put on clothes, especially socks,” McKinnis told me in an email. “Also when I was redoing my bathroom, I remember showing the shower scene in Peter Hazan‘s great semi-fictional documentary A Bigger Splash to my general contractor, saying, ‘I want to be nude, surrounded by dark blue tile just like Hockney.’ The contractor made it happen. But above all, I adore Hockney’s drawings. He was a miraculous draftsman: Crisp, concise, sensitive, modern, impressed with life in the world.”
A Bigger Splash and A Lawn Being Sprinkled (both 1967) on view in Hockney’s 2017 Tate retrospective. Photo: Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images.
Holburne Museum director Chris Stephens, who helped curate Hockney’s landmark traveling 2017 retrospective while serving as the Tate Britain‘s Head of Displays & Lead Curator of Modern British Art, told me over email that, “David Hockney was one of the greatest creative forces of the last 100 years. After a prodigious beginning, as an artist he was constantly reinventing himself. In the tradition of Matisse, David’s art was always joyous but underlying it was a serious investigation into the most effective means of depicting the lived experience of the world in two dimensions. His art was brave, touching, funny and always uplifting, as was he.”
On Instagram, London-based Afro Expressionist and Surrealist portrait painter Kojo Marfo called Hockney “a master of reinvention,” adding that “What made his reinvention so powerful is that it never felt like a gimmick or a strategy to stay current. It came from a deeper place: a genuine, lifelong curiosity about how we see the world.”
Andy Warhol portrait of David Hockney. Courtesy of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artimage.
Longtime LACMA curator Stephanie Barron, who knew Hockney so well that she sat for one of his portraits in 2013, separately echoed similar sentiments. “Hockney’s ability to see the world through fresh eyes, experiment with new ways of working and materials, and stay joyful and curious has been a hallmark of his career,” Barron noted over email. “He remained open to new ideas as he aged in a way that few artists do.”
MoMA‘s chief curator of media and performance Stuart Comer alluded to his personal experiences working with Hockney, too. “Riding through the springtime Yorkshire landscape with David Hockney, a new iPad in his lap, in a jeep rigged with nine high-definition cameras mounted on the bonnet, was an unforgettable and joyous glimpse into his fascination with looking at the world through new technologies, but never at the expense of his insistence on close looking,” Comer’s Instagram post said. “DH forever. ”
David Hockney stands before his 40 by 15 foot painting Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007) at The Royal Academy of Arts in London on May 25, 2007. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images.
Philadelphia-based conceptual artist Alex Da Corte considers Hockney one of his first favorite painters. “I remember seeing A Neat Lawn in 1998 and being magnetized by his use of flatness and organization and color,” Da Corte told me via email. “I had never been to the West Coast, but for the longest while this painting shaped what I imagined that cartoon world might be like. Soon after I found his illustrations inside of Six Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm (1970) and was excited to learn it was the same person making such wildly different work. Forever shifting and putting himself wholly into his work, Hockney, like Sherwin Williams, worked tirelessly to Cover The Earth, remaining deeply curious about nature and the wonderfully weird people in it. A true lover of life—I hope his spirit remains contagious.”
Brooklyn-based landscape painter Shara Hughes also found early inspiration in Hockney. “David Hockney was a huge influence on me ever since I first saw his 1993 book That’s The Way I See It when I was in college,” Hughes wrote via email. “He really demonstrated that there’s a difference between looking and really seeing an object, a landscape, an interior or a figure for its essence. He was a master at balancing the way a gesture can lay quietly while the color stands loudly. Today I can’t help but think of his project in Times Square during COVID with the quote ‘Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long.’ We lost a truly great artist today.”
