David Hockney has put down his brushes, silenced his iPad and wandered off beyond the frame, leaving behind a world that suddenly seems a little less colourful and considerably less mischievous.
For nearly seventy years, Hockney painted as though grey skies were a clerical error.
He took the ordinary and drenched it in California sunshine, Yorkshire rain, impossible blues and the sort of pinks that looked as though they’d escaped from a very strangest dream. Swimming pools became cathedrals. Deckchairs became monuments. Spectacles became as iconic as the man wearing them.
Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney spent a lifetime refusing to stand still. While many artists grow old gracefully, he preferred to grow curious. He embraced cameras, photocopiers, fax machines and iPads with the enthusiasm of a child discovering a new box of crayons, inspiring generations of children with boxes of crayons of their own to see art, life and the world differently. The future never frightened him; it simply gave him more toys to play with.
His art was never really about pools, landscapes or portraits. It was about looking. Really looking. At light. At people. At trees. At the strange miracle of being alive long enough to notice any of it.
Behind the thick glasses and trademark wit was a man who seemed permanently fascinated by the world, as though each sunrise might contain a secret most others had somehow missed.
David Hockney leaves behind galleries full of colour, a generation of artists in his wake and a lingering suspicion that heaven, should it exist, has just become considerably brighter. Somewhere beyond the canvas, one imagines him already rearranging the scenery and asking, in that voice, whether the clouds might work better in a slightly different shade of blue. See you again David.
Top photo ©Duane Michals (RIP) – David Hockney with Friend, c. 1975