David Hockney
Hockney’s Rake’s Progress remains one of the supreme achievements
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
The joy of socially distanced gallery-going
Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing…
How John Constable got masterpiece after masterpiece out of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk
John Constable’s paintings of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk teach us to see the beauty on our doorstep, says Martin Gayford
‘I think I’ve found a real paradise’: David Hockney interviewed
Martin Gayford talks to David Hockney about life in the Norman countryside under quarantine, how the iPad is better than paint and brush, and why he is not a communist
‘Lock him in a motel & he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
Fickle fortune
Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…
Galleries are getting bigger - but is there enough good art to put in them?
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
Julia Margaret Cameron: the Leonardo of photography
Ruskin dismissed Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs as untrue. But, argues Martin Gayford, the same could be said of any picture
Rain, shine and the human imagination — from Adam and Eve to David Hockney
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
I can’t stop thinking about the Courtauld’s Unfinished exhibition
A while ago, David Hockney mused on a proposal to tax the works of art stored in artists’ studios. ‘You’d…
Art has ceased to be beautiful or interesting — but we are more obsequious than ever to artists
Two ambitious volumes of interviews with artists have just been published. They are similar, but different. The first is by…
The death of the life class
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
David Hockney interview: ‘The avant-garde have lost their authority’
David Hockney talks to Martin Gayford about 60 years of ignoring art fashion
Has the rake progressed?
Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress has been a rich resource for artists. Film-makers recognise his modern moral subjects as an ancestor…
Christopher Sykes’s diary: David Hockney, Bridlington lobster, and the risks of a third martini
I began my week with a trip to Bridlington, the closest seaside town to my childhood home. ‘Brid’, as it’s…
