Flowers and portraits
At Annely Juda Fine Art in London, Hockney’s solo show, Flowers, Faces and Spaces, spotlights his recent flower paintings as well as his “portrait wall” of 24 friends [NESTED] and family members.
Order of the Companions of Honour
Shortly after celebrating his 60th birthday in July in Los Angeles, he returns to England where he is received by Her Majesty the Queen into the Order of the Companions of Honour.
Visiting Jonathan Silver
Having spent the early summer road-tripping through the American Southwest, once again visiting the Grand Canyon, Hockney spends late summer in Yorkshire, where his dear friend Jonathan Silver is in the final stages of cancer. Driving back and forth across Yorkshire to visit Silver—a roundtrip of more than 120 miles between Bridlington and Saltaire—Hockney contemplates how [NESTED]to paint the landscapes of his boyhood, and soon embarks upon a new body of work.
When Jonathan Silver, who ran Salts Mill, the museum of my work at Saltaire near Bradford, got really ill, I came over from L.A. simply because I could see he was dying. He was a close friend. Before Jonathan’s illness we had talked every couple of days on the telephone about art and all manner of things. That was in 1997, and it was the first time I’d stayed in England for a few months since the 1970s. Jonathan lived in Wetherby, which is a very pleasant drive from Bridlington, via York. I was going there every couple of days to visit him, and I started noticing the countryside and how it changed. Because it’s agricultural land around here, the surface of the earth itself is constantly being altered. The wheat grows, then it’s harvested, then you see it ploughed.
In a sense those Yorkshire paintings came out of the ideas of the great spaces of the West, but it did occur to me straightway that Yorkshire is one place where you have enormous vistas ... you can see everything as you drive, from Bridlington to Wetherby, just east of York, down Garrowby Hill and up it again, and I realized here’s a subject and here’s a way to paint it. Jonathan was urging me all the while to "paint Yorkshire." I had never stayed this long in Yorkshire. I was forced to see it afresh.
Painting Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorkshire
To honor Silver’s achievement in fostering the arts and reviving Saltaire’s sense of community, Hockney paints the scene at Salts Mill, the cultural center focused on his work that Silver started in an abandoned building at the heart of the town.
I’d painted Saltaire, for Jonathan; I wanted him to see it as I see it now, and also for him to know how I’d remembered it as well. Salts Mill is about time and the history of the place, and many places like it. By that I mean, for instance, the rows of houses to the right of the Mill never came down the hill like that. You would actually have to be inside the Mill looking out to achieve that perspective effect. But I grew up in Bradford in small terraces jammed together just like that, and I remember Saltaire as a busy working mill—literally the hub of the whole community.
Exhibitions
Solo
- David Hockney, Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (Apr 4–May 2).
- Flowers, Faces and Spaces, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK (May 1–Jul 19); catalogue.
- Snail’s Space with Vari-Lites, “Painting as Performance”, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., USA (Jun 6–Sep 14).
- Memorial Exhibition in Honor of Jonathan Silver, 1853 Gallery, Saltaire, UK (Dec 14, 1997–Apr 12, 1998).
- Retrospective Photoworks, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (Dec 19, 1997–Mar 15, 1998), travels to Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna (1998); Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Turin (Oct 22, 1998–Jan 31, 1999); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (Feb 10–Mar 15, 1999); Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (Mar 25–Jun 13, 1999); National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (Oct 9, 1999–Jan 5, 2000); Liljevalchs Konsthal, Stockholm (Jun 16–Aug 27, 2000); Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku (Jan 11–Mar 31, 2001); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Jul 22–Oct 28, 2001); catalogue.
Group
- A Rake's Progress: From Hogarth to Hockney, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, UK (Mar 26–Aug 31); catalogue.
- Sunshine and Noir: Art in L.A. 1960–1997, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (May 16–Sep 7), travels to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (Nov 15, 1997–Feb 1, 1998); Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'arte Contemporanea, Turin (May 15–Aug 23, 1998); Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles (Sep 16, 1998–Jan 1999); catalogue.
- Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (Jun 1–Aug 10).
- Hockney to Hodgkin: British Master Prints 1960–1980, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, USA (Jul 12–Aug 1997); catalogue.
Publications
Publications
- Hockney to Hodgkin: British Master Prints 1960-1980, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Museum of Art.
- David Hockney: Flowers, Faces and Spaces, by David Hockney, London.
- Retrospektive Photoworks, by David Hockney, Berlin: Edition Braus.
Honor
Honor
- Order of the Companions of Honour, Birthday Honours of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.