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1988
David Hockney: A Retrospective opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and then travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Tate Gallery, London. Hockney threatens to cancel the exhibition at the Tate in protest over proposed anti-homosexual legislation in Great Britain. He returns to painting, creating a series of works representing the living room and veranda of his house in the Hollywood Hills. He also produces three portraits of chairs inspired by Van Gogh’s paintings, which are commissioned by the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, to celebrate the centenary of Van Gogh’s arrival in the city. In his Malibu beach home Hockney begins a series of paintings about the ocean and small oil portraits of friends and family members that are the size of photocopies. As part of the creative process, he begins using a fax, which he describes as ‘a telephone for the deaf’. For six months, Hockney sends images around the world under the title of The Hollywood Sea Picture Supply Co. Est 1988.
Van Gogh Chair, 1988
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1989
Continues to paint small portraits of family and friends. Begins his series Pretty Plant Paintings, which he gives to friends suffering from Aids. In October he participates in the São Paulo Biennial exclusively in the form of faxed works. In November, in a live event witnessed by spectators and masterminded by Jonathan Silver, he faxes a 144-sheet composite image, Tennis, to the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill, Saltaire, near Bradford.
Henry Geldzahler II, 1989
David Hockney painting Billy Wilder, Malibu, March 1989 |
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1990
Creates ‘My Wagner Drive’, a car trip between the Pacific Ocean Highway and the Santa Monica Mountains, driven to the rhythm of Wagner. He attends a three-day conference on new computer technology with his assistant Richard Schmidt. Using the Oasis programme for Apple Macintosh, he creates his first drawing on the computer, which he prints on his laser colour printer. With the help
of his first digital camera,
Hockney produces two series of photographs: 40 Snaps of My House and 112 LA Visitors, a year-long project recording visitors to his Hollywood Hills home. In September he begins work on the stage set for Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, which is staged at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera. Richard Schmidt assists and Ian Falconer designs the costumes.
Ian Falconer from 112 LA Visitors (detail), 1990 |
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1991
Begins work on a production of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten for the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, London, that opens the following year. Travelling with John Fitzherbert, Richard Schmidt and Bing McGilvray, he drives to Chicago to see his production of Turandot.
1992
Embarks on the ‘Very New Paintings’, investigations in space and colour in a semi-abstract style influenced by his opera set designs.
River landscape scale model from Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Act III.
Scene IV, 1992
The Sixteenth V.N. Painting, 1992 |
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1993
Designs TV sets for ‘Operalia ’94’, organized by Placido Domingo in Mexico City and broadcast internationally. Begins forty-five small portrait paintings and some drawings from life of his daschund dogs Stanley and Boodgie, which he completes in 1995. The portraits are published in a book titled Dog Days in 1998. Creates a series of ‘Painted Environments’ – three-dimensional assemblages of painted canvases. Begins a group of intensely observed large-scale, half-length crayon drawings of his friends, including John Fitzherbert and Jeff Burkhart, paying particular attention to their hands. That’s The Way I See It, the second volume of Hockney’s autobiography, is published.
John Fitzherbert, Dec. 31, 1993, 1993 |
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