When Harry Met Hockney
'Sparks were inevitable' gushed British Vogue. David Hockney, meanwhile, described Harry Styles as 'just another person who came to the studio.'
David Hockney painting Harry Styles (with a portrait of Clive Davis in the background) at Hockney's Normandy Studio, 1 June 2022. Photo: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima.
A painting of pop star Harry Styles is one of 33 new works added to the National Portrait Gallery's David Hockney exhibition, David Hockney: Drawing from Life.
The exhibition, which closed after just 20 days in 2020 due to Covid-19, will reopen at the London museum from 2 November 2023 to 21 January 2024.
Styles travelled to Hockney's studio in Normandy in May last year to sit for a portrait that was unveiled by the National Portrait Gallery yesterday.
Styles reportedly leapt at the chance to be painted by Hockney, telling British Vogue that 'it was a complete privilege to be painted by him.'
They reportedly 'struck up an instant rapport', exchanging one-liners the magazine imagined were so juicy they could not be repeated, inferring that 'what happens in the studio, stays in the studio'.
Hockney, however, poured cold water on the implied bromance, saying he knew nothing about Styles.
'I wasn't really aware of his celebrity then,' he said. 'He was just another person who came to the studio.'
In a 2022 interview with The New Yorker, Hockney dismissed celebrities as anachronisms, fodder for a pre-smartphone era when media was dominated by newspapers and movies.
'On the iPhone, your friends are the stars on the screen,' he said. 'Why do you need another star or another screen out there when you've got one in your hand?'
Other new paintings in Drawing from Life are portraits of regular people, including Normandy locals and Hockney's partner Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima.
'Closing this five-star exhibition after just 20 days in 2020 was incredibly disappointing for the Gallery and its many visitors, making this restaging of David Hockney: Drawing from Life all the more significant,' said Sarah Howgate, Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections at the National Portrait Gallery, in a statement. —[O]
