Happy Birthday, David Hockney!
Here are fourteen iconic works to celebrate the artist’s 80th Year. A stalwart of the Pop art movement, David Hockney is only getting better with age.
To celebrate the 80th birthday of British artist David Hockney, we’ve rounded up our favorite works created by the bespectacled icon. Institutions worldwide are fêting the artist, who has had a banner year: The retrospective put on by the Tate Britain was the most popular ever at that museum. The show is now on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and will finish its run next year at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Hockney’s hometown of Bradford, a new gallery was dedicated to the artist on July 7. The space will offer a host of activities for his birthday on Sunday, including wigs and glasses to “Hocknify” visitors and inflatable dachshunds in honor of his beloved pets.
The “California Dreaming” series marked Hockney’s first use of then newly available acrylic paint. He captured the idyllic landscape of the West Coast in The Splash (1966), A Bigger Splash (1967), and Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–67), all of which are iconic examples of his style. Some of Hockney’s most charming and intimate works are portraits of the artist’s friends, lovers, and family—not to mention the endless study of his own visage over the years.
Below are 14 highlights from the artist’s legendary career, tracing both his innovative use of materials and the range of his subjects.
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