David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) (2011). Oil on canvas. 365.6 x 975.2 cm. © David Hockney. Courtesy Centre Pompidou, Paris and Musée national d'art moderne-Centre de création industrielle. Photo: Richard Schmidt.
David Hockney, A Year in Normandie (detail) (2020–2021). Composite iPad painting. 100 x 9000 cm. © David Hockney. Collection of the artist. Courtesy The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo.
David Hockney, No. 118, 16 March, 2020, from 'The Arrival of Spring, Normandy 2020' (2020). iPad painting printed on paper. 56.3 x 75 cm. © David Hockney. Collection of the artist. Courtesy The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo.
David Hockney, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970–1971). Acrylic on canvas. 213.4 x 304.8 cm. © David Hockney. Courtesy of the Friends of the Tate Gallery, London.
David Hockney, A Lawn Sprinkler (1967). Acrylic on canvas. 125.8 x 123.8 cm. © David Hockney. Courtesy The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo holds over 150 works by David Hockney in their collection, but they haven’t presented a major exhibition of his work since 1996.
Making up for lost time, the British artist is the subject of the museum’s blockbuster exhibition this summer, titled simply David Hockney, which continues through 5 November 2023.
The exhibition features more than 120 works, which generously cover the three threads of his oeuvre—pools, plants, and portraits—along with some fabulous outliers and curiosities.
The Hypnotist (1963) is a wicked etching of a professional mind flayer waving dark magic into the eyes of a girl whose ponytail is scared straight out behind her.
Another highlight is ’The Weather Series’ (1973), lithograph and screenprint works on paper that depicts rays of sunlight and bolts of lightning with the impact and efficiency of a comic book artist. The series wonderfully foreshadows another work in the exhibition, the video installation The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods (Spring 2011, Summer 2010, Autumn 2010, Winter 2010), which depicts the same scene in Yorkshire in sun and snow, with leaves lush and dry.
Hockney is at his best when he matches subject and medium. His swimming pools get their depth and complexity from the straight lines etched in lithographs, while his digital paintings are marvellous simplifications of complex interactions of light and colour.
A major section of the exhibition is devoted to Hockney’s portraits, which are tremendously popular, if not the artist’s strongest suit. The internet was certainly excited this month to see Hockney’s portrait of pop star Harry Styles, one of 33 new works being added to the National Portrait Gallery’s David Hockney exhibition, David Hockney: Drawing from Life, when it reopens at the London museum from 2 November 2023 to 21 January 2024.
(No unauthorised copying and replication of the images on this page—Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.)
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