Rachel Whiteread, artist: ‘It was like he was respiration artwork’
My earliest recollections of recent artists have been of David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Bridget Riley. I bear in mind seeing a TV programme about David within the Nineteen Seventies as a younger child and considering “wow, is that what being an artist is like?” As a result of my mum was an artist however she wasn’t something like that!
In contrast with Bridget Riley, who was very type of cool, David appeared on the market, embracing all of it. He was charismatic and trendy and really out and proud. He made being an artist look enjoyable. I don’t know if it at all times is that enjoyable, however he made it look that means.
I truly take into consideration him each time I am going swimming. And I swim loads. I may be diving to the underside of a pool or trying up from the underside, and it at all times astounds me how he painted water, and figures inside water. The multitudes of layering and lightweight and depth. These LA swimming pool work have been like such an alien panorama in contrast with chilly, dreary London. They have been my favorite interval of his, however I additionally preferred when he obtained actually daring and vibrant within the Nineties. And as a child I cherished his drawings: the strains, the draughtsmanship, the area … they only confirmed you what a grasp he’s. He’s created such an unbelievable physique of labor. I can’t say I’ve cherished all of it however I do love how he simply by no means stopped portray. It was like he was respiration artwork.
Jeremy Deller, artist: ‘He made an anti-smoking councillor hit the roof!’
David was an incredible function mannequin – at all times as much as one thing and having fun with it. He humanised expertise in a means that few have managed. In 2009 he helped me by designing a banner titled The Unrepentant People who smoke for a procession in Manchester. When an anti-smoking councillor came upon about it he hit the roof, which DH discovered humorous. The final work I noticed by him was at his Lightroom immersive present. That, in itself, was a enjoyable and tech savvy obituary.
Tacita Dean, artist: ‘He gave us our household motto: Inspiration, she doesn’t go to the lazy!’
In fact my husband, Mathew [Hale], and I have been totally awestruck when printmaking writer Sidney Felsen first took us up by means of the Hollywood Hills to satisfy David in 2014. Each artwork scholar of our period had a replica of the David Hockney on David Hockney e-book. Even again within the Eighties, he was legendary. However David was immediately heat and welcoming and had little curiosity in an excessive amount of reverence. After that, we noticed him typically at Getty occasions and, as soon as, on a terrace searching over Los Angeles, I noticed the actual means he was holding his cigarette, between his third and fourth fingers, as he smoked. I later requested him if I may movie him smoking and he replied that he’d fortunately sit for me. He was within the midst of an prolonged portrait sequence himself, which was the work that enabled him to transition to working once more in LA after his interval again in Yorkshire.
It was Thanksgiving break so we took our son Rufus with us to recce the area and speak the movie by means of with David. Rufus had simply had his eleventh birthday and at all times selected to decorate himself in a tie and a 3 piece go well with, probably in response to his poorly dressed dad and mom. him, David stated: “Really, Rufus, you may be relatively good to color your self.” After which, as his assistant Jonathan Mills went to fetch a canvas, he added “Inspiration, she doesn’t go to the lazy” and began that morning to sketch Rufus out. That phrase has since develop into our household maxim.
We spent the following three days going as much as the studio. There have been few higher pleasures in my life than watching David paint Rufus. He painted him with blue eyes (they’re brown) as a result of, we consider, he noticed one thing of his younger self in him. When the time got here to movie David smoking, the portray he’d manufactured from Rufus was hanging with the others on the wall behind him, which is why I titled the movie Portraits.
After that, we grew to become buddies. David even got here to see Rufus in his faculty play Cabaret. Some years later, my brother Ptolemy, newly appointed as surveyor of the material of Westminster Abbey, was requested by the then Dean, John Corridor, if he knew easy methods to get in touch with David to ask him to make a stained glass window within the Abbey in honour of the queen’s Platinum Jubilee. David took a little bit of convincing and the lengthy electronic mail chain bore the topic line 3 Deans, however ultimately he resolved it by considering of the hawthorn bushes exploding like champagne in celebration within the hedgerows in his native Yorkshire.
David was insatiably curious and deeply clever. His curiosity guided him to grasp optics, grasp new applied sciences and new mediums, hunt down scientists, watch latest motion pictures. He was a voracious reader. His studio was filled with buddies coming by means of who he was at all times completely satisfied to entertain whereas taking a look at his morning’s work on the wall past them. He was a passionate smoker however by no means smoked when he painted, solely when he was trying and he seemed loads. Like few different artists of his stature, David felt assured sufficient as an artist, and who he was, to be unencumbered by prevailing types and prohibitions. His 2025 present in LVMH was unafraid and beneficiant and at last vanquished those that had underestimated him. David was an inspiration to artists and an evangelist for pleasure who gave the reward of his artwork to a world that actually wants extra not much less of him proper now.
Marlene Dumas, artist: ‘He confirmed me it was potential to color love tales and do it delicately’
Listening to the information of Hockney’s demise made me fairly tearful. I went again to the poems of CP Cavafy and the etchings that Hockney made within the late Nineteen Sixties as a homage to them … after which I obtained actually unhappy. Hockney impressed the younger me in lots of vibrant methods, however a very powerful for me was discovering an artist that would make such touching work with simplicity and tenderness about love.
I admired the works of Francis Bacon about human relationships, however this was one thing very completely different! Up till then, I by no means considered gentleness as one thing robust when it comes to fashionable artwork. But these drawings and etchings of intimate homosexual {couples} usually are not solely particular due to their subject material, and when it was made, but in addition as a result of Hockney’s method is so arrestingly sparse. He confirmed me that it was potential to color love tales and to do it delicately.
Hockney stated about Vincent van Gogh: “he actually seemed … and what he noticed, he cherished.” That was the particular high quality of Hockney too. He handled his topics lovingly. He appeared to utterly lack the aggressive neurosis that’s a part of so many artworks of our time.
Mark Wallinger, artist: ‘He was the perfect draughtsman since Picasso’
David didn’t simply paint issues – he formed the way in which we see the world. Consider his transfer to Los Angeles within the Nineteen Sixties: what we take into consideration LA right this moment actually rests upon these swimming pool work. I’d say he’s the perfect draughtsman since Picasso. He actually did know easy methods to look – and also you seemed with him. He’s a kind of uncommon artists the place you type of felt you have been becoming a member of in with him. What a privilege and an honour.
He was at all times pushing issues ahead. In his final present at Annely Juda his iPad works of gardens in moonlight have been miraculous. He had this uncanny facility to search out the suitable medium for no matter it was he wished to depict. My most gobsmacking second with Hockney was 13 years in the past. I used to be in San Francisco and noticed a sequence of charcoal drawings of the approaching spring in East Yorkshire. Via essentially the most delicate marks you would really feel the sunshine reflecting from melting snow in a discipline.
He stated he painted the issues he cherished, and he cherished life. His work was actually all in regards to the pleasure of being alive. And truly, he painted fairly humble pleasures. There’s ardour and lightweight and warmth and libido and all the remainder of it, however he’s solely portray issues we’ve all felt or identified. Our eyes are the issues that conjure the world for us and but we are able to take the act of seeing and looking out and analyzing without any consideration. David wished us to look correctly. Past all else, it was a delight to see the world refracted by means of his eyes.
Andy Holden, artist: ‘My mum purchased me some Hockney socks’
After I left Bedfordshire for Los Angeles, my mom purchased me a pair of David Hockney image socks. At a celebration quickly afterwards, everybody needed to take their sneakers off, and my Hockney socks have been immediately very seen. I wasn’t embarrassed: no hurt in sporting your influences in your ft. Hockney threw down a gauntlet: be constant, however hold altering. I at all times hold a postcard of My Dad and mom, his portray of his mom and father, someplace in my studio, as a result of it’s, to me, an ideal portray. It has the standard I would like from any murals. So too do the Los Angeles work: even when cool and indifferent, they do the uncommon, enviable factor of arresting time. The splash of pool water after the dive is suspended for ever. As a teen, it was the Grand Canyon work that first hooked me: essentially the most splendid vacationer footage, so huge they required a number of panels and gave you vertigo. Hockney’s work was an important early gateway into artwork. You quickly realise he has laid out a full syllabus, a rounded lesson in artwork historical past. He takes images severely, factors you in the direction of Matisse, exhibits you mirrors, and makes you conscious of the likelihood that something will be your topic, so long as you keep current and take a look at what’s in entrance of you.
Helen Marten, artist: ‘He made teabags and toothpaste glamorous’
David Hockney made the wild milkshake of the world a spot of granular human curiosity, a spot the place teabags and toothpaste held equal pathos or glamour with the broad blue swimming pools and bare torsos of Hollywood. I’ve seemed so typically at his work with nice jealousy and consternation, maybe the 2 best items one artist may give one other. Treachery in making will not be finally deception however relatively the sort of carnal, political, or erotic energy that instills new data in issues we consider we already know. Hockney taught everybody easy methods to learn a puddle, a scratch, a bloom, a cartoonish line, the enveloping totality of vivid color. And he did a lot, by no means falling into the vacuum of technological replica, however dancing gleefully at its edge, lighting fires that positioned substance and style in ever-changing relationships with image-making. To discover a radical queer articulacy is to persist frequently in opposition to the lodged social anticipation of issues solved through seduction or silence. Hockney imbued every part he did with a defiant semantic contact, working all of the whereas with wild optimism and with out hubris. He’s a kind of uncommon, obsessive intellects who knew that between the hazard of carnage and the miracle of magnificence, there may be a measure to search out that marks the purpose at which ourselves start, amid the chaos of our strongest emotions. The passing of David Hockney is a cultural paradigm shift; a deep legacy that holds nice magic and everlasting pleasure.
Nicholas Serota, Arts Council England chair: ‘He introduced a brand new technology of painters’
In his work, drawings, iPad compositions and opera set designs, David touched the favored creativeness – his exhibition on the Fondation Louis Vuitton final yr drew practically one million guests. His curiosity about the way in which the world will be depicted inspired him to discover many various types. He noticed himself as being in a dialogue with nice masters like Picasso and Matisse, however was additionally impressed by different traditions akin to Japanese scroll work. Within the early Nineteen Sixties work like We Two Boys Collectively Clinging, painted at a time when homosexuality was a felony offence, introduced the arrival of a brand new technology of painters. All through his profession, Hockney frequently explored new types of portray and new topics starting from his placing views of life in Los Angeles to the rolling landscapes of Yorkshire and the abundance of nature in Normandy. His affect, generosity, and legacy are immeasurable. He was, fairly merely, an incredible artist.
James Dyson, inventor: ‘At lunch he revealed his iPad, hidden in a poacher’s pocket’
I used to be fortunate to have been on the Royal Faculty of Artwork shortly after him, following within the wake of his creative power. I’ll at all times recall his charming Yorkshire voice explaining in his distinctive and articulate means his method to artwork. I bear in mind a lunch with him in Paris, the place he revealed his iPad which had been hidden in a poacher’s pocket. He impressed each certainly one of us along with his daring realism, his perceptive colors and his breathtaking iPad work. David experimented and experimented. He was a artistic genius.
Benjamin Myers, novelist: ‘I am going on pilgrimage to see his works in Saltaire’
I’ve at all times identified Hockney represented the top of his chosen art-form, simply as I knew the Beatles did. Rising up British, he was simply at all times there – telling the reality, having fun with himself and being the residing preferrred of what a working artist will be (in a phrase: free).
For practically twenty years I’ve made visits to Salt’s Mill in Saltaire, a cathedral-like area that Hockney helped discover a new function for. For the previous 10 years my journeys have been particularly to view his The Arrival of Spring assortment. These have been the grasp’s makes an attempt to seize a distinct spring day, utilizing solely an iPad and the Brushes app, of the identical tree-lined highway close to in Woldgate within the East Using. This, I consider, was the second that portray really went digital; even Luddites may see that an artist’s eye will aways matter greater than the format and that magnificence transcends supplies and type.
For years I stood in entrance of those works, drawing inspiration, power and peace from them. Then, duly revitalised, I’d pop to the artwork store downstairs to purchase a postcard of the well-known image of Hockney and Alan Bennett collectively in profile – “Dave” and “Al”, two of the good Yorkshire homosexual males – and smile at all of it the way in which dwelling.
Jane and Louise Wilson, artists: ‘He by no means stopped trying or questioning’
David Hockney’s passing marks the lack of an artist who really remodeled how we see the world. Though we by no means met him, his work has at all times been there for us, one thing that now we have revisited many instances each in our lives and artwork apply. We bear in mind not solely Hockney’s iconic swimming pools within the California mild, however his fixed curiosity about how photos are created and the way we expertise them. His work with images and replica was not nearly method, it made us all ask the query: what does it imply to see, and the way does expertise change what we see?
Hockney’s set designs for The Rake’s Progress have been exceptional. Primarily based on William Hogarth’s engravings, remodeled into three-dimensional area utilizing perspective and heavy cross-hatching. He created these immersive drawings that you would nearly step into. It was an excellent imaginative and prescient of how a drawn line doesn’t simply describe area however can develop into area itself.
Hockney’s influence on modern artwork is profound, and it’ll take us all time to completely respect his loss. However what nonetheless feels so inspiring is the sense that he by no means stopped trying, questioning and testing the boundaries of how we see ourselves and the way a picture will be made.
Clarrie Wallis, director of Turner Modern: ‘Few have executed extra to form the world we see’
David Hockney was one of many best artists of our age. Few have executed extra to form the way in which we see the world. All through a profession spanning seven many years, he mixed extraordinary innovation with a uncommon generosity of spirit, reminding us that the world is, in his phrases, “very, very lovely for those who take a look at it”. Whether or not working in paint, images or on an iPad, Hockney inspired us to look extra intently, discovering surprise within the altering seasons, the panorama and on a regular basis life.
This spring at Turner Modern we have been honoured to unveil Hockney’s twenty seventh April 2020, No 1 as this yr’s Sunley Gallery Window fee. Drawn on an iPad in his dwelling in Normandy, this dawn scene types a part of his celebrated exploration of sunshine and the altering rhythms of nature. Right here the work is enlarged to architectural scale and illuminated after darkish – remodeling our seafront window right into a radiant celebration of sunshine, hope, and renewal. It embodies the optimism and pleasure that characterised Hockney’s exceptional apply.
Thomas Demand, artist: ‘I realized an incredible deal from one little blue spot’
David Hockney was a big affect on me, particularly as a scholar, and I’ve at all times watched intently what he was as much as. I learn his early writings and realized an incredible deal from them — David Hockney by David Hockney, as an example, and his notes on images. I didn’t at all times share his views, however they have been filled with elementary insights. His tone in these books was unpretentious and lucid, immediately relevant to day by day apply, even for somebody like me, who on the time neither painted nor made images.
In Bavaria, in the mean time when the Teutonic wave of dangerous figurative portray swept by means of like a tempest, one infrequently noticed his works within the flesh. So I travelled, and found how fastidiously thought of they have been — and but how a lot he allowed issues to occur. He was undogmatic, beneficiant in the direction of the work in a means that just about nobody else was on the time.
One element specifically stayed with me: the unpainted white border round A Larger Splash, with a small drop of blue paint on the backside — the sort of factor one may furiously attempt to clear away or one way or the other rescue. Hockney merely let it stay. I realized an incredible deal from that little spot: about magnificence, perfection, and the grace of not being inflexible.
Philippe Parrenom, artist: ‘With Hockney, color turns into intelligence. Perspective turns into want’
Seeing, in Hockney’s work, was by no means passive. We don’t merely obtain the world by means of the eyes; we assemble it by means of reminiscence, want, motion and a focus. The portray turns into a aircraft the place time immediately seems.
A splash!
Synchronicity between sound and picture doesn’t come solely from the truth that they occur on the similar second. It comes from the sensation that the sound has already been heard. What we acknowledge will not be a trigger, however a reminiscence. We’re haunted by an earlier listening.
Hockney’s splashes, swimming pools and seashores are acoustic. A quick sound enters the picture: a disturbance of the floor, one thing showing and disappearing on the similar time. It’s not solely water being represented; it’s an occasion. One thing has occurred, or is about to occur. The portray holds that interval.
The traditional concept of extramission imagined imaginative and prescient as one thing emitted by the attention. Greek mathematicians and astronomers described eye-beams as straight, conical rays extending outward from the attention towards the noticed object. Seeing was a type of emission. As a science, the concept belongs to the previous. However as a poetic fact, it feels very near David Hockney’s work. His work don’t appear to obtain the world passively. They ship one thing towards it.
In questioning the only mounted viewpoint, Hockney made this much more specific: the sensation that seeing is cellular, constructed, alive. Classical perspective locations one eye earlier than one world. Hockney opened that construction. He allowed many moments of imaginative and prescient, many positions, many durations to coexist.
The seen world feels unfinished in his work. Color turns into intelligence. Perspective turns into want. Portray turns into a type of consideration to one thing which will occur.
Andrew McMillan, poet: two rapidly sketched ideas on David Hockney
12.6.2026
i)how so typically in his portraitshe appeared to seize the sitterin the second simply after they’d been instructed that they have been lovely
ii)how issues appear barely duller nowa little drier my pal Joe sayinghe feels a sudden urge to livewhile I’m considering of timber our brevity how they’ll outlast
