David Hockney: ‘Just because I’m cheeky, doesn’t mean I’m not serious’
May 9, 2015
At 77, and with two new exhibitions, David Hockney is more prolific and outspoken than ever. He tells us why he stopped painting after the death of his assistant ? and why, despite a 9pm bedtime, he?s still a rebel at heart
David Hockney has a fag in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, fish and chips and mushy peas in front of him, and he is surrounded by his own work. If this were a painting, it might be called The Artist In His Element.
We are at his home in Kensington, where Hockney sits under a series of framed self-portraits in all manner of moods, all of them finger-painted on his iPad. He looks a little frail today. He has recently arrived from Los Angeles, where he spends most of his time. Yesterday he was jetlagged and bedbound, and today he?s getting his head back together. He?s surrounded by a team of assistants and friends who tend to him discreetly and lovingly ? bringing in the fish and chips, filling his empty cup with more tea, fetching him a beer. As we sit down together, they leave the room; Hockney has been going deaf for 40 years, and has hardly any hearing left. The only way he can conduct a proper conversation these days is without background buzz.
But at 77, Hockney is still working ludicrously hard, with two new shows in London this summer. He?s also every bit as dapper as the peroxide hipster who emerged in the early 1960s ? red tie, white shirt, baggy grey slacks, green cardigan and matching green lighter. In the 60s, Hockney seemed to swing with the best of them ? Andy Warhol, Ossie Clark, Tony Richardson, much of Hollywood (Billy Wilder, George Cukor, John Schlesinger). But half a century on, his perspective has changed.
?I was never much of a party boy. I didn?t mind being seen that way, but I am actually a worker. An artist can approve of hedonism, but he can?t be a hedonist himself.?
What about all those LA swimming pools, the naked young men and the atmosphere of sunny indolence? His best-known art seems to reflect the happy excesses of the good life, a Californian bohemia. Ah, yes, he says, he did live in bohemia, but that didn?t dampen his Victorian work ethic: you can take the boy out of Bradford, etc. ?I thought I was a hedonist at the time, but when I look back I was always working. I am always working. I work every day. I never give parties; I never gave them.? These days, when his team come round to his LA home in the evening (friends, assistants, former lovers ? often all three in one), he leaves them to it. He unplugs his hearing aids and is in bed by 9pm.
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