David Hockney est décédé le 11 juin 2026

English version : click here

Il y a des tas d’expositions nouvelles en ce moment, partout. Et tous les jours, il y en a d’autres qui s’ouvrent. Je ne sais pas où donner de la tête, ni des doigts.
Mais aujourd’hui, il faut que tout cela attende, que tout s’écarte. Un grand, un géant de l’art est mort hier, et comme tant d’autres, je ne peux m’empêcher d’y aller, moi aussi, de mon ode à David Hockney (1937-2026).

«La joie de la nature», au musée Van Gogh 2019 (photo JW)

On connaît son histoire. Né à Bradford, dans le nord industriel de l’Angleterre, dans une famille ouvrière, David Hockney découvre très jeune son talent et très jeune aussi, il reçoit une formation au dessin. Plus tard, il descend à Londres, où il peut poursuivre ses études au prestigieux Royal College of Art. Le succès vient très vite. Ensuite, il s’envole pour New York, plus tard pour la Californie. C’est là que, ébloui par la lumière et les couleurs, il fait ses fameuses peintures de piscines (comme le célèbre « A Bigger Splash »). Et pendant des années durant, il fera plus ou moins la navette entre la lumineuse Californie, son Yorkshire natal et, plus tard, la Normandie, où il passera en tout cas le temps de la pandémie, et où il fait une de ses plus belles fresques, exposée à la Fondation Louis Vuitton en 2025.

J’ai écrit déjà plusieurs fois sur Hockney et certaines de ses expositions (au Van Gogh Museum, au musée Teylers, et à d’autres endroits encore). Et à chaque fois j’étais éblouie, soufflée, par ses couleurs, sa vitalité, et sa capacité de se réinventer à chaque fois. Hockney n’hésitait pas à explorer, puis à embrasser et à perfectionner de nouvelles techniques, la photo, l’i-pad, la vidéo, ou des combinaisons de tout cela, et à chaque fois, il nous coupait le souffle. Il fallait du courage, car au départ, le monde artistique n’appréciait pas forcément ces «mélanges» entre informatique et peinture. Mais Hockney n’avait pas froid aux yeux, et il l’a montré aussi en affirmant que les peintres d’antan se servaient d’instruments (d’optique, de mesure) pour établir la perspective. Sacrilège! Mais Hockney tenait bon, il en a fait la démonstration dans ses oeuvres à lui – et il avait probablement raison.

Son oeuvre reste, et c’est formidable. Qu’il s’agisse de paysages, de portraits, d’« instantanés » (comme la trace de la plongeon dans la piscine), de dessins au fusain, de peinture sur i-pad ou de vidéos, la virtuosité de Hockney est immense. Et son oeuvre nous reste. Alors, autant on est triste que ce grand artiste nous ait quittés, autant on peut se réjouir de pouvoir, encore et encore, admirer cette oeuvre.

Pour en savoir plus: regardez A Bigger Picture, documentaire de Bruno Wollheim (2010). Vous pouvez le voir en ligne ici (pour le voir en entier, il faut payer), ou vous pouvez regarder 80 films courts fait pour les 80 ans de David Hockney.

Voir aussi: La joie de la peinture : Hockney à Amsterdam – Vu du Nord

David Hockney, grand peintre britannique, est mort à l’âge de 88 ans

David Hockney : « J’ai toujours voulu faire des images » | France Culture

Image en tête: Le printemps arrive à Woldgate. Musée Van Gogh, 2019

Top

Death of a giant

David Hockney (b. 1937) died on June 11, 2026.

There are many new exhibitions to write about, and I started doing just that. But today, everything has to wait. Today – like so many others – I have to commemorate David Hockney (1937-2026). He is one of the contemporary artists I admire most, and I am not the only one. I have written about several of his exhibitions (among others in the Van Gogh Museum, or in Teylers Museum).

David Hockney, Spring in Woldgate, charcoal on paper, 2012; shown in Van Gogh Museum, The Joy of Nature, 2019

Born in the industrial city of Bradford in a working class family, his talent was discovered when he was still very young, and he had drawing lessons from a very young age, too. Later, he went to London where he was admitted to the Royal College of Art. There, his talent was noticed as well, not only by his teachers and other students, but also by galleries and art merchants. Success came pretty soon. Hockney certainly was not one of those artists whose recognition comes only after their death, or late in life. Right away, his work sold well – which permitted him to travel and to live comfortable. He went to New York, then to California, where he was as smitten by the light and colours as Van Gogh was in Provence. It was in California that he made his famous swimming pool paintings, among which ‘‘A Bigger Splash’’.

A room in the Hockney exhibition in Paris (Louis Vuitton Foundation, 2025)

Yet Hockney didn’t forget the Yorkshire of his youth, and he returned there regularly, even for longer periods. There he made – among many other works – his famous ‘‘Spring’’ series, and it was also there he started working with new techniques. I remember his earliest i-pad ‘‘paintings’’, one of which represented rain – like a video, except that it wasn’t a video. Hockney was probably the first painter to embrace those new techniques – and to incorporate them in his paintings. He was quite brave in that respect, for in the beginning his use of the i-pad was frowned upon in certain circles. ‘‘Painting’’ with an instrument like that wasn’t serious! In the same way, Hockney proclaimed that painters in earlier centuries used instruments to establish the perspective in their pictures. Sacrilege! It couldn’t be… But he was probably right – and he showed it in his own work.

It was also on his i-pad – perfected by himself – that he made his ‘‘Normandy’’ series. He stayed in his house in Normandy during the pandemic, and each and every day he painted the landscape, that changed with the weather and the seasons – like the landscape he portrayed in Yorkshire. A combination of hundreds of these small pictures and a gigantic ‘‘fresco’’ was shown (among other places) in 2025 in the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

Hockney’s year-round paintings made in Normandy, 2022 ; here shown in Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, 2025

Few artists are or were so inventive and prolific as Hockney. He probably was creative and busy till his last moments. In a way, his death makes us orphans. But fortunately, there is his work, which we can see and admire time and time again. In that sense, artists are never really gone.

Interesting: A Bigger Picture, documentary by Bruno Wollheim (2010). You can watch it online here (to watch the whole film, you have to pay), or you can watch 80 short films made for David Hockney’s 80th birthday.

David Hockney obituary | Painting | The Guardian

‘The vibrant proof of a presence slipped away’: Why David Hockney’s 1967 masterpiece is newly poignant after his death