Freedom always

The first thing that strikes you upon looking closer at the life of David Hockney—the celebrated British painter who will turn 88 this July—is his freedom. He has always walked the path of independence in both thought and action. Trends and orthodoxies are of little interest to him, even if the current wave of figurative art now rampant in museums and the art market is all the more conducive to the celebration of his long career.

Largest ever exhibition

From April 9 through August 31, this dandy, once known for his peroxide-blond hair (now naturally white), is the star of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris with the largest exhibition ever dedicated to him—400 works in total.

The most sensational

The exhibition is one of absolute superlatives: the most sensational, the most colorful but also with the largest paintings and with the largest series of paintings. Several of its monumental works are titled “bigger,” echoing the famous 1967 painting A Bigger Splash, which is on display here. A feast for the eyes — and an absolute delight. Hockney is not an inventor of forms. He is an inventor of sensations.

Suzanne Pagé, the Fondation’s artistic director, confirms with enthusiasm: “What we’re presenting is an apotheosis.”

Vibrant colors

At the fondation Louis Vuitton, his freedom is naturally front and center.

It takes a cheerful, playful form. Hockney wanted to recreate his world, in vibrant colors, varied lighting and walls painted in unexpected hues that deliberately contrast with his polychrome compositions. He chose to focus on the last 25 years of his work—hence the title “David Hockney 25”—though the exhibition opens with a selection of major works from 1962 to 1980.

Judging a painter

You should see the mischievous smile he wore throughout our video call.(He did not wish to appear on video). The first thing he said on the occasion could be the slogan of his big show: “You can only judge a painter after you’ve seen their latest finished work.”

When I paint, I’m happy

Hockney creates insatiably, obsessively. “When I paint, I’m happy,” he said. These days, he doesn’t travel much. After spending the lockdown in bucolic Normandy observing the changing of the seasons—during which he produced, among other things, 100 iPad drawings of nature in spring, all on view in Paris—he now lives in a small house in London, where he can get better medical care at his age. But he  has visited the Vuitton exhibition.

Yes I still smoke

“I hope the hotel has a smoking room. Yes, I still smoke,” he adds defiantly, a cigarette in hand waiting to be lit. Then, brimming with joy: “When I did the show at the Centre Pompidou in 2017, after the Tate and before a smaller version at the Met, I told JP [his partner Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima]: ‘This is probably the last big exhibition I’ll have.’ I’m so happy, so excited to see this new show in Paris. I’ll go into every single room.”

British dandy

Free, indeed: Hockney does not have the look of a quiete old man. Forever a British dandy, he still cuts a sharp figure, that day wearing round glasses rimmed in yellow-gold, a houndstooth jacket, and an acid-green vest paired with a black-and-white checkered tie. On his lapel, a badge read: “End of Business soon” which he has worn since the smoking ban in public places in Britain in 2007.

Openly homoerotic

His freedom of spirit was evident early on. From the early 1960s, young Hockney’s work stood out for its singularity. Pieces like “Two Men in a Shower” and “Boy About to Take a Shower” were openly homoerotic. This at a time when, up until 1967, homosexuality was still criminalized in England.

First painting ever sold

Where does Hockney’s inner strength come from? Perhaps his father, an accountant who was also a pacifist deeply committed to social causes. On display in Paris is a portrait of him from 1955 painted in a naïve style characteristic of Hockney’s future aesthetic. It was the first painting the artist ever sold. Though he was born into a modest family, this global art star has never been one to chase after laurels. Some say he even turned down a British knighthood.

Matisse, Van Gogh, Picasso, Munch

But there’s one field in which Hockney wants to be recognized as a specialist, and that’s the history of art. He draws deeply from it in his work, something clearly evident throughout this retrospective of sorts. Some pieces reference art history directly, like those on the second floor, where titles from 2023 and 2024 invoke the Norwegian Modernist genius Edvard Munch or the English visionary William Blake. He also makes frequent nods to Van Gogh and Picasso.

Secret Knowledge

But more than that, Hockney wants to assert himself as a true connoisseur of art history. He’s written several books on the subject, most notably the deeply researched “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters” (Thames & Hudson) from 2006.

He doesn’t just look at the work of the past—he studies it, absorbs it, sometimes even re-creating the gestures of his predecessors until they become his own.

Ingres

He recalled: “It was 1999. I went to see an Ingres exhibition at the Met maybe eight times, because I was fascinated by the drawings. I remember: It took me three days to draw an arm like him. Ingres made his drawings in a single day. Because of the size of his sheets, I figured out he used a camera lucida. No one was interested in that technique anymore, but my assistant found one. I used it to make around 300 portraits.”

Expressive energy

He eventually returned for good to freehand drawing. Accuracy, for him, isn’t what counts, but rather the expressive energy the artist infuses into the portrait. The Paris exhibit devotes significant space to Hockney’s portraiture. From his trusted press agent Erica Bolton to pop star Harry Styles, he sketches them all with equal enthusiasm, without hierarchy, in an effort to immortalize his world. Here again, art history is never far off.

In 2013, when he painted JP, overwhelmed with his head in his hands, he borrowed the pose from Van Gogh’s “Old Man in Sorrow.”

Donatien Grau

Donatien Grau, a close friend of the artist, advisor for contemporary programs at Le Louvre, whose portrait also features in the show, explained: “He has the demeanor of an art historian. You have to remember that growing up in 1950s England, art history was the preserve of the privileged. David broke free of that. He also holds strong positions, like being one of the first to champion Picasso’s late work, even organizing a symposium about it at the Guggenheim.”

Vermeer, Caravaggio

In his 2006 book, Hockney also takes on the subject of the camera obscura, the optical device that projects real-world images in two dimensions. “Historians have a problem with technology,” he argues. “Vermeer, Caravaggio, they didn’t draw. How could they have painted what they did without a camera? My book explores how technology influenced the development of painting techniques. Some artists and historians supported me. Others attacked me. Most ignored it.”

Today, Hockney works in the same vein as his predecessors from the past: He too explores new technologies in his creative process.

Anthology of all media

The blockbuster show at the Fondation Vuitton is, one could argue, an anthology of all the media he has used across a long career of experimentation. For instance, in 2008 he was making digital portraits on a computer. The same year, he started sketching on an iPhone. By 2010, he was using an iPad.

Given his playful nature, he likes to disorient the viewer. His large series of flower portraits—which includes sunflowers evoking Van Gogh—were drawn on an iPad, then printed on paper, but framed in the traditional style of oil paintings. And one entire room is devoted to his recent passion for immersive video projections.

The last self portrait

And yet, the most recent piece created specially for the exhibition is a painted self-portrait: Nothing could be more classic. He represents himself drawing in the garden of his London home. His signature is unmistakable: that obsession with invasive patterns, inherited perhaps from Matisse. The epicurean artist has sketched a striped sky and a garden flanked by yellow flowers dotting an English-green lawn. Dressed in a suit of yellow and dark red, he looks the viewer right in the eye.

Before lighting another cigarette…

April 9-August 31, 2025

www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en