David Hockney caught the look of the modern world

David Hockney changed the world just by looking at it. His art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, a lifelong delight in flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun, always seeking truth rather than revolution. No one had captured the look and feel of the contemporary world with such acceptance; he had the same simple perfection as the Beatles.

He loved LA, seeing freedom and possibility under an unjudging blue sky where others saw a moronic inferno. Low-lying houses with patio doors glinting vacantly, tall thin palm trees and the white spume of a diver’s splash became visions of paradise in works such as A Bigger Splash, the 1960s answer to Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté.

Being gay was just part of the truth he lived and painted; he would have been upset if we remembered him as “Britain’s first openly gay artist”. From the splashy Doll Boy to his portrait of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, his work in the 1960s found the right style to show gay life as it is.

Britain, LA

david hockney, bigger splash, los angeles, doll boy, christopher isherwood, don bachardy, gay life, matisse, beatles, contemporary art