David Hockney has been the subject of more than 400 solo exhibitions over his long career. The British-born artist is such a rock star, The Guardian reports Tate Britain will be opening its doors until midnight for the first time to cope with demand for its current major retrospective of Hockney’s work.
At a point in his life when major world museums are presenting big Hockney shows, the artist could easily retire. But an exhibition of 28 images he created of Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Suite, shows how Hockney continues to reassess familiar territory in new ways. After being shown in London, New York and Venice, CA, Yosemite Suite has arrived in the Bay Area. The works are on view at the Pace Gallery in Palo Alto through May 7.
The Los Angeles-based visual artist visited Yosemite in 2010 and 2011. Instead of an easel or medium-format camera, he brought his iPad along. The digital drawings he created using the software Brushes have been reproduced as large prints for display, four of them stretching to nearly eight feet in height.
Some of the resulting images have been tucked into bigger shows, like David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in 2013. But seeing all 28 images assembled together in a dedicated exhibition immerses the visitor into Hockney’s vision of Yosemite. It’s a vision that is at once sunny and riotously colorful.
Trees rise up like the columns of an open, sunlit Gothic cathedral. You feel like you could face-plant into the fluffy, flower-covered mountainsides.
Hockney’s digital space
Over the course of his long career, Hockney has embraced all sorts of technologies, from Polaroid photographs to fax machines. Yet his work always remains rooted in painting.