David Hockney Dies at 88, Leaving Los Angeles an Enduring Visual Myth
Updated
Updated · Los Angeles Times · Jun 12
David Hockney Dies at 88, Leaving Los Angeles an Enduring Visual Myth
3 articles · Updated · Los Angeles Times · Jun 12
Summary
88-year-old David Hockney died Thursday, renewing focus on how his paintings helped fix Los Angeles in the global imagination through pools, palm trees, modernist houses and bright California light.
1964 marked the start of that transformation: arriving at 26, Hockney found in Los Angeles the space, architecture and sexual freedom that pushed his work from fantasy scenes toward vivid local subjects.
1966 to 1968 produced some of his defining California images, including “A Bigger Splash” and “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” the latter sold at Christie’s New York last year for $44.3 million.
1978 brought a permanent move to Los Angeles after years between Europe and America, and his Hollywood Hills home later fed large, more abstract works of Mulholland Drive and Nichols Canyon.
Even after Yorkshire landscapes became central to his later career, critics and friends said Los Angeles remained the place that shaped both his art and the world’s image of California.