Story perspectives

Hockney Launches Paris Retrospective, Shows Lockdown Garden Art

6/15/2026

Summary

Hockney Opens Retrospective

He opened the “David Hockney 25” retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in April, emphasizing his 21st-century work and citing his 2001 book Secret Knowledge linking his art to camera-obscura.
During the COVID-19 lockdown he emailed daily iPad paintings of his Normandy garden, showing spring trees, rain-spattered ponds and electric-yellow sunrises.
He quit opera set design because of deafness and headlined a 2024 solo show at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Summary

Hockney Dies

David Hockney died peacefully at his London home on Thursday at age 88.
He was a Companion of Honour (1997) and an Officier of France’s Legion d’Honneur (2026), and his 2018 Portrait of an Artist sold for US$90.3 million, a record for a living artist.
Exhibitions will open at Tate Britain and the Munch Museum in Oslo.
King Charles III praised Hockney on X as a giant of art.

Summary

Hockney Protests Section 28

In 1988 David Hockney threatened to cancel a Tate exhibition to protest the UK’s anti-gay Section 28 law.
Hockney’s 1962 work *Cleaning Teeth, Early Evening (10 pm) W11* uses red Colgate tubes as a queer code.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1964, Hockney lived openly as a gay man, painted California as a pool-filled fantasy, and, through his platonic bond with fashion designer Ossie Clark, influenced their 1960s aesthetics.

1 of 3

Hockney Opens Retrospective

He opened the “David Hockney 25” retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in April, emphasizing his 21st-century work and citing his 2001 book Secret Knowledge linking his art to camera-obscura.
During the COVID-19 lockdown he emailed daily iPad paintings of his Normandy garden, showing spring trees, rain-spattered ponds and electric-yellow sunrises.
He quit opera set design because of deafness and headlined a 2024 solo show at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

1 / 3