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Books

David Hockney, our most popular and hardworking living artist, returns to the easel

A review of ‘Hockney: The Biography, Volume II’, by Christopher Simon Sykes. He’s got grumpier with old age, but still Hockney retains his youthful curiosity and energy

20 September 2014

9:00 AM

20 September 2014

9:00 AM

Hockney: The Biography, Volume II, 1975–2012 Christopher Simon Sykes

Century, pp.430, £25, ISBN: 9781846057083

The first volume of Christopher Simon Sykes’s biography of David Hockney ended in the summer of 1975. The 38-year-old painter had just returned to Paris, where he was then living, ‘energised’ by the widespread acclaim that greeted his designs for the Glyndebourne production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Energy was something Hockney would need in the years ahead when the time he always wanted to devote to painting was frequently interrupted by side-projects such as stage design or an investigation into earlier painters’ use of the camera lucida, sudden passions for new technology, and the increasing demands of celebrity.

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