David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy

‘We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.'
David Hockney

On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to live a life of simple pleasures, undisturbed and undistracted; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art.

Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel and others.

We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see … but about how to live.

A Sunday Times bestseller

Contents List:

1 An unexpected move
2 Studio work
3 La vie française: French life in a Bohemian style
4 Lines and time
5 A merry Christmas and an unexpected New Year
6 Locked down in paradise
7 A house for an artist and a painter’s garden
8 The sky, the sky!
9 Sumptuous blacks and subtler greens
10 Several smaller splashes
11 Everything flows
12 Rippling lines and musical spaces
13 Lost (and found) in translation
14 Picasso, Proust, and pictures
15 Being somewhere
16 Full moon in Normandy

About the Author:

David Hockney is perhaps the most critically acclaimed artist of our age. He has produced work in almost every medium and has stretched the boundaries of all of them. His bestselling Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters is also published by Thames & Hudson, as are his previous books in partnership with Martin Gayford: A Bigger Message and A History of Pictures. Martin Gayford is art critic for the Spectator. His books include Modernists & Mavericks, Man with a Blue Scarf, A Bigger Message, Rendez-vous with Art (with Philippe de Montebello), A History of Pictures (with David Hockney), and, most recently, The Pursuit of Art, all published by Thames & Hudson.

'A compelling narrative of the workings of a curious, intelligent, visually inventive mind at work … a book designed to instil pleasure and to lift the spirits' Art Quarterly

The story of David Hockney, one of the most widely acclaimed of all living artists, is one of passion: passion for seeing, passion for telling, passion for images. But to these should be added passion for life. Hockney's art is a celebration of what it is to be alive. All his pictures - sometimes tender, as when he draws close friends and family; sometimes playful, as in his paintings of lazy, carefree days at the pool; sometimes awe-inspirin, as with his monumental images of the Grand Canyon - convey what it means to be in the world, to see it, to move in it, to love it. This constant exploration of how to communicate such feelings through art emerges with particular clarity in this stunning, lively volume, which charts almost fifty years of extraordinary creativity.

Hockney's Pictures is the first definitive 'retrospective' to show the evolution and diversity of Hockney's prolific paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints and photography. The works, including many that are new and never published, have been selected and organized by David Hockney himself, and track his lifelong experiments in ways of looking and depicting.

Contents List:

Introduction: Loving the world with new eyes • Problems of Depiction: Looking at Pictures • A Marriage of Styles • Stages • Water • Movement • Moving Viewpoint • Life Stilled: Life and Love • Lives • Still Life • Home • Portraits: Friends • Family • Self • Space and Light: South • West • East • North London • Yorkshire

About the Author:

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He has produced work in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking - and has stretched the boundaries of all of them. Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, Hockney attended art school in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. There, he painted his famous swimming pool paintings. In a 2011 poll of more than 1,000 British artists, Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time. He continues to create and exhibit art.

Portrait of an Artist. A comprehensive chronicle of David Hockney’s life and work

Pop artist, painter of modern life, landscape painter, master of color, explorer of image and perception — for six decades, David Hockney has been known as an artist who always finds new ways of exploring the world and its representational possibilities. He has consistently created unforgettable images: works with graphic lines and integrated text in the Swinging Sixties in London; the famous swimming pool series as a representation of the 1970s California lifestyle; closely observed portraits and brightly colored, oversized landscapes after his eventual return to his native Yorkshire. In addition to drawings in which he transfers what he sees directly onto paper, there are multiperspective Polaroid collages that open up the space into a myriad of detailed views, and iPad drawings in which he captures light using a most modern medium — testaments to Hockney’s enduring delight in experimentation.

This special edition has been newly assembled from the two volumes of the David Hockney: A Bigger Book monograph to celebrate TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. Hockney’s life and work is presented year by year as a dialogue between his works and voices from the time period, alongside reviews and reflections by the artist in a chronological text, supplemented by portrait photographs and exhibition views. Together they open up new perspectives, page after page, revealing how Hockney undertakes his artistic research, how his painting develops, and where he finds inspiration for his multifaceted work.

The artist:

David Hockney (born July 9, 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He first emerged in the early 1960s during the height of British pop, then moved to Los Angeles in 1964, where he famously painted a series of swimming pools. Alongside the classic genres of portraiture and landscape, he always kept evolving his art, using technologies such as Polaroids, photocopiers and fax machines, digital video, or the iPhone and iPad as tools for his painting. Since his first big survey exhibition, which in 1970 traveled Europe from the Whitechapel Gallery in London, he has been one of the most widely shown and popular artists of our time.

The editor:

Hans Werner Holzwarth is a book designer and editor specializing in contemporary art and photography. His TASCHEN publications include the Collector’s Editions Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Ai Weiwei, and the David Hockney SUMO A Bigger Book, as well as monographs like the XXL-sized Jean-Michel Basquiat.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

16 notecards (with envelopes) featuring four of Hockney’s paintings of his beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie

This set of 16 notecards (four each of four designs) features David Hockney’s drawings of his dogs Stanley and Boodgie. Included in this set are 16 envelopes.

About the Author:

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He has produced work in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking - and has stretched the boundaries of all of them. Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, Hockney attended art school in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. There, he painted his famous swimming pool paintings. In a 2011 poll of more than 1,000 British artists, Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time. He continues to create and exhibit art.

This book, which accompanies the first major exhibition devoted to David Hockney’s drawings in over 20 years, will explore Hockney as a draughtsman from the 1950s to now, with a focus on himself, his family and friends. From Ingres to the iPad – this book demonstrates the artist’s ingenuity in portrait drawing with reference to both tradition and technology.

David Hockney is recognised as one of the master draughtsmen of our times and a champion of the medium. This book will feature Hockney’s work from the 1950s to now and focus on his depictions of himself and a smaller group of sitters close to him: his muse, Celia Birtwell; his mother, Laura Hockney; and his friends, the curator, Gregory Evans, and master printer, Maurice Payne.

This book will examine not only how drawing is fundamental to Hockney’s distinctive way of observing the world around him, but also how it has been a testing ground for ideas and modes of expression later played out in his paintings.

From Old Masters to modern masters, from Holbein to Picasso, Hockney’s portrait drawings reveal his admiration for his artistic predecessors and his continuous stylistic experimentation throughout his career.

Alongside an in-depth essay from the curator, this book will feature an exclusive interview between author and curator, Sarah Howgate, and artist, David Hockney. In addition, an ‘In Focus’ essay by British Museum curator Isabel Seligman, will explore the relationship between Hockney, Ingres and Picasso drawings.

A new, compact edition of David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s brilliantly original book, with a revised final chapter and three entirely new Hockney artworks

'I won't read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' AN Wilson, The Sunday Times

Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with the art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? How do you show movement in a still picture, and how, conversely, do films and television connect with old masters?

Juxtaposing a rich variety of images – a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velázquez painting – the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and make unexpected connections across time and media. Building on Hockney’s groundbreaking book Secret Knowledge, they argue that film, photography, painting and drawing are deeply interconnected. Insightful and thought-provoking, A History of Pictures is an important contribution to our appreciation of how we represent our reality. This new edition has a revised final chapter with some of Hockney’s latest works, including the stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey.

Contents List:

1. Pictures, Art and History 2. Pictures and Reality 3. Making Marks 4. Shadows 5. Picturing Space and Time 6. Brunelleschi’s Window and Alberti’s Mirror 7. Mirrors and Reflections 8. Paper, Paint and Multiplying Pictures 9. Painting the Stage and Staging Paintings 10. Caravaggio and the Academy of the Lynx-Eyed 11. Vermeer and Rembrandt: the Hand, the Lens and the Heart 12. Truth and Beauty in the Age of Reason 13. The Camera Before and After 1839 14. Photography, Truth and Painting 15. Painting with and without Photography 16. Snapshots and Moving Pictures 17. Movies and Stills 18. The Unending History of Pictures

About the Authors:

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He has produced work in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking - and has stretched the boundaries of all of them. Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, Hockney attended art school in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. There, he painted his famous swimming pool paintings. In a 2011 poll of more than 1,000 British artists, Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time. He continues to create and exhibit art.

Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator and the author of acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michelangelo. He is the author of Man with a Blue Scarf, Rendez-vous with Art and A Bigger Message. He has collaborated with David Hockney on A Bigger Message and A History of Pictures, and has co-written a volume of travels and conversations with Philippe de Montebello: Rendez-vous with Art.

The perfect gift for Hockney fans and dog lovers everywhere, David Hockney's Dog Days, now in a gift edition, is an album devoted to two of the artist's closest friends, his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. This beautiful and engaging book includes almost all of Hockney's paintings and drawings of his two companions, dozens of new illustrations created specially for this book, and a text by the artist himself.

This summer 2016 publication brings together the recent body of work by David Hockney, perhaps the most popular and versatile British artist of the last century.

Following his sweeping exploration of landscape in the Royal Academy’s galleries in 2012, this focused display will look exclusively at the portraits he has been painting in the last few years – the subjects of which are friends, family and art-world luminaries. After the sad events that touched his life in 2012, Hockney had stopped painting altogether. His move from Yorkshire to California coincided with his decision to revisit acrylic paints and bold colours.

Vibrant, observant and full of life, these portraits mark a return to vivid, Technicolor form. Incisive text from Tim Barringer places these works within Hockney’s development as a portrait painter, while curator Edith Devaney interviews the artist about the series, which he describes as ‘twenty-hour exposures’, in reference to the time each portrait takes to paint.

The book will show the stages of each painting, from first to last mark, to give the reader a unique insight into Hockney’s working method.

About the Authors:

Tim Barringer is the Paul Mellon professor of the history of art at Yale University.
Edith Devaney is head of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and curator of contemporary projects at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

This consideration of Hockney's work from 1960 to the early nineties dispels myths and opens up new lines of inquiry concerning his contributions to post-modern art. Filled with beautiful color plates of his paintings, the book draws on extensive research and the artist's personal archives. In a broad chronological format the book reveals the major phases in Hockney's oeuvre: his early years as a student at the Royal College of Art in London and his ironic experimentation with different styles of painting; his images of life in southern California; his highly personal portraits and their studies in perspective; his reinterpretations of modernist paintings; and his forays into photo-collage.

The authors' incisive commentary reveals how Hockney's paintings question, parody and undermine accepted ideas about modern art, while forcing us to reconsider our assumptions about originality and creativity.