CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/29/2024

In 'David Hockney: Paper Trails,' an artist brimming with love

At 89 years old, David Hockney remains one of the most important—and beloved—figurative artists of the 20th or 21st centuries. A painter’s painter equally known for his exquisite draftsmanship in drawings, watercolors and prints—as proven by Skira new release David Hockney: Paper Trails—he is also a notoriously flexible, utopian embracer of new technologies. For example Matelot Kevin Druez 2 is a computer drawing from 2009. “Everything in a Hockney work circles back to people,” Russell Tovey writes. “In Hockney’s art, whatever his theme, however he renders his image, constructed in whatever material or process he is currently exploring, his desire to connect to us the audience is fundamental. And what a privilege it is, to be alive at the same time as Hockney. When an artist as authentic as him remains continuously engaged in the challenge of trying to connect to as many people as possible, it inspires the rest of us with his storytelling vision. If there is one thing we can take away from a Hockney exhibition and indeed every singular Hockney image, it is quite simply, love. Through this repetition, he constructs an archive that underscores unity, weaving an amorous thread connecting all his artworks regardless of the medium. This is an artist brimming with love, for his friends, for the world around him, for things, for life, for love itself.”