Frail David Hockney celebrated in vast Paris retrospective

PARIS — Increasingly frail but with undimmed passion, Britain’s David Hockney has put aside his health worries to shape what he describes as the biggest exhibition of his vast career.

With around 400 works assembled over four floors, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris has put on a stunning tribute to one of the world’s best-selling living artists.

Although titled “David Hockney, 25” and mostly focused on the last quarter-century of his life, it contains paintings from the very start of his career, as well as his blockbuster time in California in the 1960s.

In the last of 11 rooms, there are several unseen creations from the last two years, including a self-portrait in acrylic and a striking meditation on the afterlife inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.

“It’s enabled him to look back in a positive way,” Norman Rosenthal, guest curator and a long-time friend of Hockney, told AFP ahead of the opening to the public on Wednesday.

“He’s very, very happy with the exhibition.”

Hockney, 87, insisted on overseeing the show, even taking an interest in the colour of the walls and sending back corrections for the texts written to inform visitors.

“He says it is the biggest exhibition of his career,” Louis Vuitton Foundation curator Suzanne Page told AFP. “He’s been very involved.”

 Twilight years

Born in 1937 to working-class parents in the northern English town of Bradford, Hockney has painted everything from the fields of his native Yorkshire to the sun-soaked private homes of California.

The Paris show includes an entire room of portraits, as well as vivid landscapes and memorable moonlight scenes that he produced while living in Normandy, northern France, from 2019 to 2023.

There are also touches of his trademark humour.

In his most recent self portrait he is smoking a cigarette and wearing a yellow badge that reads “End Bossiness Soon”.

The subtitle for the exhibition reprises a line he wrote to friends during the COVID-19 lockdowns when sending them pictures from Normandy: “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring.”

But there are also hints of a man in his twilight years contemplating his mortality — and perhaps his last major show.

An evolving digital creation of a sunrise in Normandy, which he produced like many others on his iPad, concludes with a quotation from French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld.

“Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long,” it reads.

Now in a wheelchair and with 24-hour care at his home in London, Hockney told The New York Times in a recent interview that he was grateful to be alive.

“Even last year, I thought I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “But I still am.”

He travelled to Paris ahead of the opening this week and was spotted around the elaborate Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton Foundation wearing one of his classic colourful tweed suits.

Having steadily lost his hearing in recent decades, he stayed in a private room during the opening party on Monday, which was attended by French first lady Brigitte Macron among other VIPs.

Smoking ban

Some of his more recent work, including the iPad renderings from Normandy, have drawn mixed reviews but the exhibition also contains some of the classics from his portfolio that are usually in private hands.

These include the enigmatic “Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures)”, which depicts Hockey’s former lover staring into a Californian pool.

It sold for $90.3 million at auction in New York in 2018, briefly setting a record for a living artist.

Last year, six paintings by Hockney appeared in the top 100 most valuable works acquired at auction, according to data from the art market consultancy Artprice.

Rosenthal, one of Britain’s most respected art figures, speaks of Hockney in the same breath as Picasso or Monet.

“I think this exhibition proves that his work over 60 years has a level that never changes,” he explained. “There’s incredible variety and yet amazing consistency.”

And Hockney continues to produce.

“He’s reached a certain age and he’s aware of it. He’s a great smoker but I think he wants to go on,” Rosenthal continued. “He paints every day.”

A photo of Hockney holding one of his beloved Camel cigarettes featured on posters advertising the show, which have been banned from the Paris metro for contravening anti-smoking laws.

He described the decision as “complete madness”.

“David Hockney, 25” runs until September 1, 2025.