Life of David Hockney

by Catherine Cusset

  Portraits after landscapes. Spring after winter. The hand after technology. Oil after watercolors. Color after charcoal. California after England. Joy after tragedy. The dawn after night. Creation after the void. And so on. Everything occurred in alternation. There were no answers to useless questions. Just cycles. Life wasn’t a straight road with a linear perspective. Winding, it stopped, started again, reversed, then leapt forward. Chance, tragedy, were part of the great design. The great design, drawing, weren’t they the same thing? The ability to perceive order in the chaos of the world. That is what attracted David to art, what he liked best in his favorite painters, Piero della Francesca or Claude Lorrain: the complex balance of colors and opposed elements, the place of man in space, the feeling that he was but a small part of a greater whole. The artist was the priest of the universe.

  There was only one certainty: the child, as soon as he could hold a pencil, made a mark. Since the beginning of time, humans have attempted to express in two dimensions their wonder before a three-dimensional world. That would not stop anytime soon.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank the following people for their wonderful encouragement and useful comments: Luciana Floris, Mylène Abribat, Charles Kermarec, Hélène Landemore, Ben Lieberman, Mirjana Ciric, Gordana de la Roncière, Hilari Allred, Jacqueline Letzter, Wadie Sanbar, Hilary Reyl, Rosine Cusset, Amanda Filipacchi, Richard Hine, Alessandro Ricciarelli, Jennifer Cohen, Shelley Griffin, Catherine Texier, Denis Hollier, Nathalie Bailleux, and Anne Vijoux.

  I also thank my editor, Jean-Marie Laclavetine, and Antoine Gallimard for their unwavering support, as well as my American publisher, Judith Gurewich, my editor, Alexandra Poreda, and the whole team at Other Press, for welcoming this little book.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Works are given in order of importance for this novel.

  BOOKS

  David Hockney. David Hockney. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.

  David Hockney. That’s the Way I See It. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993.

  David Hockney. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.

  Christopher Simon Sykes. David Hockney: A Rake’s Progress. The Biography, 1937–1975. New York: Doubleday, 2012.

  Christopher Simon Sykes. David Hockney: A Pilgrim’s Progress. The Biography, 1975–2012. New York: Doubleday, 2014.

  Lawrence Weschler. True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

  Martin Gayford. A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney. London: Thames and Hudson, 2011.

  George Rowley. Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947.

  Marco Livingstone and Kay Haymer. Hockney’s Portraits and People. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003.

  Tim Barringer et al. David Hockney: A Bigger Picture. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2012.

  Richard Benefield, Lawrence Weschler, Sarah Howgate, and Gregory Evans. David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2013.

  Didier Ottinger, editor. David Hockney: Catalogue officiel de l’exposition, Paris, Centre Pompidou, du 21 juin au 23 octobre 2017. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2017.

  ARTICLES

  Peter Fuller. “An interview with David Hockney.” Art Monthly, no. 12 (November 1977): 4–10.

  Hilton Kramer. “The Fun of David Hockney.” New York Times, November 4, 1977.

  Nigel Bunyan. “David Hockney assistant died after drinking drain cleaner, inquest told.” Guardian, August 29, 2013.

  Simon Hattenstone. “David Hockney: ‘Just because I’m cheeky, doesn’t mean I’m not serious.’ ” Guardian, May 9, 2015.

  FILMS

  Philip Haas and David Hockney. A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, or: Surface Is Illusion But So Is Depth. 46 minutes. 1988.

  Jack Hazan. A Bigger Splash. Starring David Hockney. 106 minutes. 1974.

  Randall Wright. Hockney. 112 minutes. 2014.

  Monique Lajournade and Pierre Saint-Jean. David Hockney: In Perspective. 52 minutes. 1999.

  CATHERINE CUSSET was born in Paris in 1963. A graduate of the École normale supérieure in Paris and agrégée in Classics, she taught eighteenth-century French literature at Yale from 1991 to 2002. She is the author of thirteen novels, including The Story of Jane and L’autre qu’on adorait (short-listed for the 2016 Prix Goncourt), and has been translated into seventeen languages. Cusset lives in Manhattan with her American husband and daughter.

  TERESA LAVENDER FAGAN is a freelance translator. She has published more than a dozen book-length translations, including Jean Bottéro’s The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia and Yannick Haenel’s Hold Fast Your Crown.