What I Learned From David Hockney

Article excerpt

Curator Norman Rosenthal spent more than six decades with David Hockney, watching the British artist move from pop painting to landscapes to digital experiments. Yet when they collaborated on a final blockbuster exhibition, Rosenthal discovered something unexpected: a revelation about what drove Hockney's restless evolution across media and continents. In a personal essay, Rosenthal reflects on how even a lifelong observer can find fresh insight into an artist's core preoccupations, suggesting that Hockney's real subject, beneath the swimming pools and Yorkshire hills, remained constant even as his tools transformed.