David Hockney has revealed that he has completed 75 new portraits and will be showing the full set at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. “I’m going to show all these portraits next year in London, and I’ll show them in Los Angeles eventually because I painted them here,” the 78-year-old Bradford-born, Los Angeles-based artist told a sold-out event at the Getty Center in September.
Hockney began the series, which features art-world figures including Larry Gagosian and Benedikt Taschen, as well as studio associates and friends, in 2013 on his return to Los Angeles. “They sit for three days for 20 hours,” he says, describing a typical painting session at his long-time studio in the Hollywood Hills, off Mulholland Drive. “In a way, it’s a 20-hour exposure. I don’t use optics. I don’t use anything, just drawing and painting people sitting there.” As for the portraits, “most of them look pretty good”, Hockney says. His subjects are all “individuals and they look like individuals”.
Hockney also announced that he is working on a new book with his long-time collaborator, the critic Martin Gayford. “I’m actually doing a history of pictures, not the history of painting, because I want to include technology. It will be out next year,” he says.
