Happy Birthday, David Hockney

BY: Jes Zurell

Great art is like great sex – it allows for the exploration of boundaries, makes you weak in the knees, and occasionally, people cheat.

David Hockney once said, “The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you’re an artist.” He wasn’t referring to the stereotypical playboys of art, whose affairs numbered in the hundreds. Rather, Hockney understands that the most prolific artists of our time take reality and mold it into their own brand before presenting it to the world. If there’s one area of art where reality is most roughly made to bend over and take it, it’s self-portraiture.

So what really counts as cheating now, anyway?

In the era of Instagram, we speak openly about these dirty breaks in the rules. We call it “filtering” or PhotoShop now, but Hockney and his contemporaries explored artistic infidelity decades before it was cool or publicly accepted. In celebration of Hockney’s 80th birthday on July 9, a two-part exhibition, entitled Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockney, is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The show features Hockney’s rarely seen self-portraits, Polaroid composites and photo collages, including the Getty Museum’s masterpiece Pearblossom Hwy., 11–18th April 1986, #2, which was last shown in 2008. Both segments run through November 26.

“Hockney’s self-portraits in many ways reflect his career, exploring interests ranging from his flamboyant fashion sense to his own changing features and the consequences of ageing, but always laced with wit and deep sensitivity,” says Julian Brooks, senior curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “They were never intended for commercial sale, and have instead remained with the artist.”

Hockney embraced change throughout his career, and even adopted mobile art apps early in the game. One of the pieces in the show was, in fact, created on an iPad. Other works, such as his photo collages, take seemingly simple, pure moments and fracture them, like watching a pool party where the sun is a strobe light. Individual tiles of photographs stretch the truth out to something recognizable, yet provocative. The paintings are both patient and flustered, with a penchant for power reds. The tie that binds and creates cohesion is decidedly not the medium, but rather the message: If it feels good, do it.