David Hockney | 118 Pop Art | Pop Art

David Hockney, OM, CH, RA is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.
Hockney has a home and studio in Kensington, London and two residences in California, where he has lived on and off for over 30 years: one in Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, and an office and archives on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California.
Hockney was born in Bradford, England, to Laura and Kenneth Hockney (a conscientious objector in the Second World War), the fourth of five children. He was educated at Wellington Primary School, Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art (where his teachers included Frank Lisle and his fellow students included Norman Stevens, David Oxtoby and John Loker) and the Royal College of Art in London, where he met R. B. Kitaj. While there, Hockney said he felt at home and took pride in his work. At the Royal College of Art, Hockney featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries—alongside Peter Blake—that announced the arrival of British Pop art. He was associated with the movement, but his early works display expressionist elements, similar to some works by Francis Bacon. When the RCA said it would not let him graduate in 1962, Hockney drew the sketch The Diploma in protest. He had refused to write an essay required for the final examination, saying he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognising his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded the diploma. After leaving the RCA, he taught at Maidstone College of Art for a short time.
A visit to California, where he subsequently lived for many years, inspired him to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new acrylic medium rendered in a highly realistic style using vibrant colours. The artist moved to Los Angeles in 1964, returned to London in 1968, and from 1973 to 1975 lived in Paris. In 1974 he began a decade-long personal relationship with Gregory Evans who moved with him to the US in 1976 and as of 2017 remains a business partner. In 1978 he rented the canyon house in which he lived when he moved to Los Angeles, and later bought and expanded it to include his studio. He also owned a 1,643-square-foot beach house at 21039 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, which he sold in 1999 for around $1.5 million.
Hockney is openly gay, and unlike Andy Warhol, whom he befriended, he openly explored the nature of gay love in his portraiture. Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a poem by Walt Whitman, the works refer to his love for men. Already in 1963, he painted two men together in the painting Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, one showering while the other washes his back. In summer 1966, while teaching at UCLA he met Peter Schlesinger, an art student who posed for paintings and drawings, and with whom he was romantically involved.
On the morning of 18 March 2013, Hockney's 23-year-old assistant, Dominic Elliott, died as a result of drinking drain cleaner at Hockney's Bridlington studio; he had also earlier drunk alcohol and taken cocaine, ecstasy and temazepam. Elliott was a first- and second-team player for Bridlington rugby club. It was reported that Hockney's partner drove Elliott to Scarborough General Hospital where he later died. The inquest returned a verdict of death by misadventure and Hockney was never implicated.
In November 2015 Hockney sold his house in Bridlington, a five-bedroomed former guesthouse, for £625,000, cutting all his remaining ties with the town. He retains a studio in London and a house in Malibu, California. Hockney has smoked cigarettes for over 60 years but has been teetotal since 1990 when he had a heart-attack. He holds a California Medical Marijuana Verification Card, which enables him to buy cannabis for medical purposes. He has used hearing aids since 1979, but realised he was going deaf long before that. He swims for half an hour each day and can stand for six hours at the easel.
Hockney made prints, portraits of friends, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Born with synaesthesia, he sees synesthetic colours in response to musical stimuli. This does not show up in his painting or photography artwork, but is a common underlying principle in his designs for stage sets for ballet and opera—where he bases background colours and lighting on the colours he sees while listening to the piece's music.
Hockney painted portraits at different periods in his career. From 1968, and for the next few years he painted friends, lovers, and relatives just under lifesize and in pictures that depicted good likenesses of his subjects. Hockney's own presence is often implied, since the lines of perspective converge to suggest the artist's point of view. Hockney has repeatedly returned to the same subjects – his parents, artist Mo McDermott (Mo McDermott, 1976), various writers he has known, fashion designers Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark (Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970–71), curator Henry Geldzahler, art dealer Nicholas Wilder, George Lawson and his ballet dancer lover, Wayne Sleep.

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Pool 2 figures

A bigger splash

Nichols canyon

We two boys together clinging

Portrait of an artist pool with two figures

Place furstenberg, paris

North yorkshire

Clark percy

Woldgate Woods III

Spring lLandscape

A bigger grand canyon

Red pots in the garden

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)

Bigger Trees Near Warter Or Peinture Sur Le Motif Pour Le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate

Yosemite i

Man in Shower in Beverly Hills

Shower beverly hills

The gate

Peter Getting out of Nick's Pool

Man Taking Shower in Beverly Hills

American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman)

Nick wilder

Untitled (951)

Garrowby hill

The twenty fourth

Royal Academy of Arts

Pearblossom highway

Lawn sprinkled

Untitled (389)

Lithographic water made of lines, crayon and two blue washes without green wash

Salts mill, saltaire, yorks

Woods and november

3 chairs picasso

Rainy night on bridlingtom promenade

Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians

Furstenberg paris

The valrave

B1119d469eec73ca06a2d9f9e9f65708

Bolton junction, eccleshill

A bigger

Untitled (909)

2 (1743080c)

Untitled (947)

Path through wheat field

Untitled (828)

Yosemite i (2)

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate (2)

Malibu

Pool

B6a7a35840308e6a00bec8058e9a9ad

Arranged felled trees

Brushes

The dancers

Unfinished self

The twelfth

Late spring tunnel

Untitled (153)

Nichols canyon

The Road to York through Sledmere

Hawthorne blossom near rudston

Three Trees near Thixendale

Roads and Cornfields, East Yorkshire

My Brother is only Seventeen

Beverly hills housew

Artistic devices

More Felled Trees on Woldgate

Landscape in Memory

Deep - (2826344b)

A lawn being sprinkled

My parents

Untitled

Man in a Museum (or You're in the Wrong Movie)

Model with Unfinished Self-Portrait

Portrait of Nick Wilder

Double Study for A Closer Grand Canyon

My parents

The third love painting

Dog days

Cactus

Studio

Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural

For the Dear Love of Comrades

Lithographic Water Made of Lines, Crayon ^ a Blue Wash

Egyptian Head Disappearing into Descending Clouds

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy

Door closeup

Going to be a Queen for Tonight

Self Portrait with Charlie

Augustus and Perry Barringer

Untitled (656)

Moorside road, fagley

Bosque

Portrait Surrounded by Artistic Devices

Fresh flowers

Drawing from life

Going up Garrowby Hill

Life Painting for Myself

Oona zlamany

Study for 'Sur la terrasse'

I'm in the Mood for Love

Arthur lambert

Lithographic Water Made of Lines and Crayon

Swimming pool

Study for Doll Boy

Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style

29 december

Card players #3

Untitled (588)

Bertha alias Bernie

Labor omnia vincit

The Berliner and the Bavarian

Bora, bora

Untitled (Big Tyger)

The group

Composition (Thrust)

Chair with Photograph

Bounce4bradford

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