David Hockney was the highest paid artist for a living artist's work in 2018. British-born David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937, in West Yorkshire, Bradford, England, as the fourth child of a family of five children.
Hockney, who was interested in books and art from an early age, was a fan of Picasso, Matisse and Fragonard. His parents always encouraged their son's artistic inclination and gave him the freedom to dream.
Hockney studied at Bradford College of Art from 1953-57. He completed his master's degree at the Royal College of Art London. During this period, he was experimenting with different genres, including abstract expressionism. He was a very successful student, his paintings winning prizes and being bought for private collections. At the same time, he was working on set and costume designs for ballet, opera and theater.
Art Life of David Hockney
Hockney's early paintings highlighted his literary leanings. He added pieces of poetry and quotes from Walt Whitman to his works. He started to include homosexuality in his art with his works such as "We Two Boys Clinging Together" in 1961.
He went to Los Angeles for the first time in 1963 and settled there completely in 1966. Painting swimming pools in Los Angeles was one of his favorite subjects. It was during this period that he developed an expressionist style, and by the 1970s it began to be considered more realistic. Hockney was also interested in painting the interior and exterior of California homes as well as pools. In 1970, he began to dabble in photography by making photo collages, which he called 'joiners', consisting of a group of polaroid photos placed on a grid. Hockney was a master photographer and began to work more extensively in this field.
In the late 1980s, he focused on painting again, starting with portraits of seascapes, flowers, and people he loved. He continued to use the popular one by making use of technology as well as pool theme, reflections in water, double-portraits and color choices, which are characteristic features in his works. In other words, it showed that it kept up with the digitalizing world of pop art. His first homemade prints on a photocopier in 1986 were the first time he incorporated technology into his art. The combination of art and technology created a great admiration for him. He started making photo-collages with the popularity of polaroids and 35mm color prints in the 80s.
It started using laser fax machines and laser printers in 1990. In the 2000s, he worked with iPhone and iPad using the "brushes" application. In 2011, he held an exhibition of 100 works, all made from iPhone and iPad, at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Title of the Most Expensive Painter Living
David Hockney, whose painting 'Portrait of an Artist - Two Figures in a Pool' was sold for $ 90.3 million in 2018, became the highest paid for the work of a living artist. This title passed to the American sculptor Jeff Koons on May 15, 2019, whose stainless steel rabbit statue he made in 1986 was sold for a record price of 91 million 75 thousand dollars.
David Hockney's Works in the Coronavirus Process
Hockney continued his artistic work at full speed when the coronavirus epidemic brought the whole world to closure in 2020. The 83-year-old artist told about the process, “I knew at this age that I had to isolate myself to do anything really worthwhile. Then came the lockdown in March and I didn't care at all because it meant there would be no visitors and I could have worked at the job for a long time and I did," he said.
Fashion World and Hockney
David Hockney designed the cover of French Vogue in 1985, and in this design, inspired by the Picasso & Cubism movement, he painted Celia Birtwell, which we see in many of his other works. Hockney says of this offer, which he initially turned down: “When they first asked me, I refused. I didn't know enough about fashion and it didn't interest me anyway. Then they said it didn't have to be about fashion, it could have been anything. I thought if anything can happen then I can do it. I thought we could work on the kind of photo collages I made on the page, and therefore I showed that it is possible to break up and transform the photograph, provided that it is worked on the printed page… After all, 40 pages in the middle of a fashion magazine, forty pages in the middle of the pictures that use a single perspective… Because all the other photos in the magazine are traditional images. way made. I wanted to show how photography can be done in different ways.”
Hockney was not only involved in fashion with his art, but also inspired many designers. In 2005 Christopher Bailey, creative director of the Burberry brand, was created entirely by Hockney.
Hockney was not only involved in fashion with his art, but also inspired many designers. In 2005, Burberry brand creative director Christopher Bailey created a spring/summer creation inspired entirely by Hockney's work. In 2012, Vivien Westwood named one of her designs after Hockney. Hockney's relationship with fashion is not limited to these, as he is also a fashion icon. The artist, who has been on Vanity Fair's Best-Dressed Hall of Fame list since 1986, was named GQ's 50 most Stylish Men in Britian in 2011. It also entered The Guardian's 50 Best Dressed Over-50s lists.
Portrait of the Artist, Two Figures in the Pool
This work, completed by Hockney in 1972, is an acrylic pop art painting on a large canvas. The piece sold for a record $90.3 million at an auction held at Christie's in November 2018. Alex Rotter, Vice Chairman of Christie's Auction House in charge of post-World War II and contemporary art, stated that the painting is the most valuable piece among Hockney's works, both in terms of art history and the painting market. "The painting reflects both European and American perspectives," said Rotter, "it is a representation of a European artist who came to live on the sunny beaches of California in the 1960s, seeing himself living on both continents."
A Bigger Splash
'A Bigger Splash' from 1967 takes us to a calm and sunny day in California. It places the spectator next to a swimming pool, in the middle of a tranquil scene made up of only horizontal and vertical lines, apart from the diagonal formed by the springboard. We can almost hear the euphoric sound of that great leap that broke the sacred calm of the scene. Considering the difficulty of painting this moment, which lasts only a few seconds, 'A Bigger Splash' is one of Hockney's most famous and daring works. Hockney explained this work with the words, "It took me two weeks to paint an event that took two seconds."