{"id":14013,"date":"2025-04-12T14:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T14:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14013\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T14:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T14:53:09","slug":"fondation-louis-vuitton-mounts-david-hockneys-largest-exhibition-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14013\/","title":{"rendered":"Fondation Louis Vuitton Mounts David Hockney\u2019s Largest Exhibition Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cDo Remember They Can\u2019t Cancel the Spring,\u201d artist David Hockney<\/a> told the world in March 2020, just as lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic began. That sentiment<\/a> was in full swing, in the early days of spring now five years later, throughout the artist\u2019s just-opened survey at the Fondation Louis Vuitton<\/a> in Paris (on view through August 31). Spanning all four floors of the museum, the current exhibition is the largest ever devoted to the British artist, whose work was last surveyed in Paris at the Centre Pompidou eight years ago. The eleven-room presentation consists of over 400 objects, from paintings and drawings to digital works (made via both computer and iPad) and even immersive video installations. Titled \u201cDavid Hockney 25,\u201d the show focuses on the last 25 years of his career, but also includes pieces from throughout his seven-decade career. <\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Portrait<\/p>\n

\n\tUpon entering, the exhibition you immediately notice its colorful display, full of brilliant greens, deep blues, and blazing yellows that suffuse the institution\u2019s usually immaculate white walls. The Fondation Louis Vuitton\u2019s artistic director Suzanne Pag\u00e9 attributed this sensibility to Hockney himself. \u201cHe is the true curator of the exhibition. He called all the shots,\u201d she said, adding that the artist worked closely with his partner and studio manager Jean-Pierre Gon\u00e7alves de Lima and assistant Jonathan Wilkinson. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibition begins on the lower level, opening with his emblematic works from the 1950s to the \u201970s, including Portrait of My Father (1955), the first painting Hockney ever sold and which he recently bought back. \u201cWhen he visited the exhibition, you could tell he was not looking at the painting per se, but rather at his beloved father,\u201d Pag\u00e9 told ARTnews ahead of the show\u2019s opening. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"View<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of \u201cDavid Hockney 25,\u201d 2025, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, showing, from left, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970\u201371) and Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: Marc Domage\/\u00a9Fondation Louis Vuitton; Art: \u00a9David Hockney<\/p>\n

\n\tThe adjacent gallery is home to 1967\u2019s A Bigger Splash, Hockney\u2019s iconic depiction of a Californian swimming pool just after an unseen figure has dived in, and his 1972 Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which sold<\/a> to top collector Pierre Chen<\/a> for $90.3 million at Christie\u2019s in 2018. On either side of a door leading to a series of Yorkshire landscapes, from the \u201990s to the early 2000s, hang two of his most famous double portraits: Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968) and Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970\u201371). (Mrs. Clark, or Celia Birtwell, is a frequent model of Hockney\u2019s, appearing in a handful of paintings throughout the exhibition.) \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThese double portraits hint at what\u2019s upstairs, where the Fondation Louis Vuitton has assembled around 60 such works. Hockney is known for only painting people he knows: his assistants, his cook, his gardener, his siblings, and his friends, like Frank Gehry, the building\u2019s architect. Hockney\u2019s approach to portraiture speak to his painterly affection for his models, as seen in his depiction of Gon\u00e7alves de Lima with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, a pose he borrowed from van Gogh\u2019s 1882 Sad Old Man (At Eternity\u2019s Gate)<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Hockney, JP Gon\u00e7alves de Lima, 11th, 12th, 13th July 2013, from the series \u201c82 Portraits and 1 Still Life,\u201d 2013\u201316. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Richard Schmidt\/\u00a9David Hockney<\/p>\n

\n\tHockney has always embraced the influence of his predecessors, and much like the van Gogh painting inspired a composition, Fra Angelico\u2019s Annunciation (ca. 1440\u201345), with its emphasis on reverse perspective caused him to update previous works. Garrowby Hill (2017), for example, shows the twisty curves and angled plots of the Yorkshire landscape that he has depicted since the \u201990s. And when he was stuck in Normandy during lockdown, he turned to the approach of painting en plein air favored by the Impressionists like Monet. Using his iPad, Hockney created luminous compositions in juxtaposed flat tints, but with pop accents, to capture the effects of light and climactic changes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Hockney, Garrowby Hill, 2017. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Richard Schmidt\/\u00a9David Hockney<\/p>\n

\n\tThis part of exhibition closes with a handful of never-before-seen works, which Hockney himself refers to as being \u201cmore spiritual\u201d than his previous ones. The enigmatic After Blake: Less Is Known Than People Think (2024), for example, echoes the illustrations that the Romantic poet William Blake made for Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy, though Hockney\u2019s version is a cheerier vision of the strata of heaven, hell, and Earth, replete with a Pointillist sky. Even more recent is Play Within a Play Within a Play and Me with a Cigarette (2024\u201325), featuring the painter in a patterned ochre suit, as he smokes and sketches out the very same scene that unfolds before the viewer\u2019s eyes. On his checkered jacket a round sticker reads \u201cEnd Bossiness Soon.\u201d This tongue-in-cheek self-portrait recalls a 2004 interview he gave to BBC Newsnight: \u201cI hate bossiness \u2026 I smoke for my mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Hockney, Play Within a Play Within a Play and Me with a Cigarette, 2025.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Jonathan Wilkinson\/\u00a9David Hockney<\/p>\n

\n\tThe current exhibition highlights how Hockney has become a master in the art of blending tradition and innovation through his vibrant palette and his appetite for new technologies, like sketching with his iPad. His largest work in the show, Bigger Trees Near Warter Or\/Ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique (2007), consists of 50 panels that had been digitally subdivided by Gon\u00e7alves de Lima in order to create this 15-foot-by-40-foot mammoth. Nearby are his nocturnal views of Normandy, which were exhibited last year at the Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. So fluid is Hockney\u2019s technique in both traditional and digital painting that it makes it almost impossible to tell the acrylics and the iPad works apart. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Fondation\u2019s top gallery, often called \u201cthe cathedral\u201d for its high ceilings, has been transformed into a site-specific installation, made in collaboration with 59 Productions, that plunges visitors into Hockney\u2019s work for the stage. On view are set designs, and some costumes, for Igor Stravinsky\u2019s The Rake\u2019s Progress (1975), Mozart\u2019s The Magic Flute (1978) and Richard Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde (1987). Here visitors can sit back on a giant cushion, relax, and enjoy the wall projections, as well as their corresponding soundtracks.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of Hockney Paints the Stage, 2025, by David Hockney & Lightroom, with 59 Productions, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Marc Domage\/\u00a9Fondation Louis Vuitton; Art: \u00a9David Hockney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDo Remember They Can\u2019t Cancel the Spring,\u201d artist David Hockney told the world in March 2020, just as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,9684,4024,4022,77,9685,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-14013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-contributor","11":"tag-david-hockney","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-fondation-louis-vuitton","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114325566560658163","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}