David Hockney

by Christopher Simon Sykes

  They arrived at Warhol’s brownstone to find three other people there: the actor Dennis Hopper, who had appeared with James Dean in both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, his wife, Brooke Hayward, and Henry Geldzahler, the newly appointed assistant curator of twentieth- century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a good friend of Warhol’s. “Dennis wanted to buy one of Andy’s Mona Lisa paintings,” Hockney remembers. “He invited us to come the next day and watch him shooting a television series he was working on.”38 As soon as Hopper had left, Hockney mentioned to Warhol that he’d just seen a still of Hopper outside a downtown cinema, so they all piled into a cab and went down to 42nd Street to see him in Night Tide, directed by Curtis Harrington. Then the following day they took up Hopper’s invitation and went up to Harlem to watch him filming an episode of Naked City, a popular detective series then playing on TV, which always ended with the line, “There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.”

  This twenty-four-hour episode, immortalised in a famous photo-graph taken on the set, marked Hockney’s first meeting with a man who was to become one of the key figures in his life. Born in Antwerp in 1935, Henry Geldzahler came from a family of European Jews who emigrated to the United States in 1940. He attended Yale University and, on graduation in 1960, joined the staff of the Met. Quick-witted, extremely funny and gay, he was a fountain of knowledge. “Oh, you know so much,” Andy Warhol once said to him. “Teach me a fact a day, and then I’ll be as smart as you.”39 Barely able to sit still—he was later to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—he hit it off with Hockney right away. “Henry and I got on instantly,” Hockney remembers. “First of all he liked the fact that I’d remembered seeing Dennis Hopper in the film still. We then realised we shared a love of music, opera in particular, which I had started to go to a bit, upstairs at Covent Garden, and there was painting of course, and we became friends very quickly. He was very, very funny, very clever, and we had the same kind of taste. I thought we had a similar way of looking at life.”40

  On his return to London at the end of May 1963, Hockney was introduced to someone who was to further transform his life. Paul Cornwall-Jones was a young architect two years down from Cambridge who with a fellow undergraduate, Michael Deakin, had hit upon a clever way of making money: commissioning topographical prints of their colleges, Emmanuel and Jesus, from the artist Julian Trevelyan and selling them to the staff and students. This venture had been successful enough for them to form a company, Alecto Editions, named after one of the mythical Furies. Cornwall-Jones’s big coup was persuading John Piper to do a print for the quattrocentenary of Westminster School; the success suggested the potentially huge audience for an artist with a big name. His lodger, Mark Glazebrook, was a friend of Kasmin’s, and told him about David Hockney, and A Rake’s Progress.

  “He thought Hockney was terrific,” Cornwall-Jones remembers, “and took me round to Powis Terrace to meet him. He was very young and very open and I immediately liked him. As for the work, I thought it was fascinating.”41 What he saw was the complete set of sixteen images, all stuck up on the wall of the studio. He was intrigued by the fact that the prints were not made from a set of finished drawings that were then copied onto plates—the only drawings that existed were a few studies made on scraps of paper—but were drawn directly on to the plates, Hockney developing the image as he went along. Cornwall-Jones was hugely impressed by the work, and decided to take a gamble: he made an offer for fifty sets of A Rake’s Progress at £100 each, making the then staggering sum of £5,000.

  “… they were paying me a hundred pounds each for a set of sixteen prints,” wrote Hockney, “and they were going to print them. They sold the sets for two hundred and fifty pounds each, and I didn’t dare tell people the price because it was so outrageous I was ashamed of it; I thought etchings should cost two or three pounds each; two hundred and fifty pounds—madness!”42 The typographer Eric Ayers introduced Cornwall-Jones to an elderly jobbing printer who worked in Bushey, on the outskirts of London, and printed the fifty sets over the next few months. It always amused Hockney that when he offered the old man, who had done the job so beautifully, a complimentary edition, he turned it down because he said he didn’t like them. “Every time I went to see him,” he wrote, “to see how they were going on, he would show me a little etching of a churchyard or something, and he would say, ‘Can’t you do anything like this?’ And I would say, ‘Well one day I’ll be able to do something like that.’ ”43

  Under the terms of Hockney’s contract, the money for A Rake’s Progress, which was to be paid over three years, went through Kasmin, who now had his own gallery in partnership with Sheridan Dufferin. He had operated out of Ifield Road for a year before he began to consider looking for a premises, a step which had become necessary to establish himself and avoid being eclipsed by the other young dealer making his name on the gallery scene, Robert Fraser. Fraser was a 25-year-old ex-army officer and Old Etonian with a remarkable eye for art, who had recently, with the backing of his father, a successful City banker, opened a gallery in Duke Street. His opening exhibition, the first show in England of paintings by Jean Dubuffet, had caused quite a stir, and subsequent shows, which included work by Egon Kalinowski, Richard Lindner, Eduardo Paolozzi, Harold Stevenson and Francis Bacon, had proved to be influential. “The gallery made an extraordinary impression from the beginning,” commented Bryan Robertson, the director of the Whitechapel Gallery, “because of its obvious sophistication and style … It felt serious. And the kind of work that one saw there, pretty well all the time, was of a very high order.”44

  Kasmin understood how difficult it would be to find the perfect site, and he was not prepared to accept second best. The British artists he was primarily interested in, like Hockney, Richard Smith, Bernard Cohen, Robin Denny and Anthony Caro, all worked on a scale that was large by London standards, as did the Americans he sought to represent, who included Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Frank Stella and Jules Olitski. He needed somewhere bold, where their work would not look out of place and which took them out of the English drawing room. On the site of the old Walker Galleries at 118 New Bond Street, behind a small shopfront, which had already been let, he found what he had been looking for: a series of nineteenth-century galleries with cornices, skylights and a large room, which had infinite possibilities. “… the main room was a peach of a space,” he recalled, “and the gallery was going to be one big room in which you could see everything by turning round.”45

  The architect Kasmin employed was Richard Burton of ABK, step-son of John Russell, the art critic of the Sunday Times, to whom Kasmin wrote: “I want to show artists no one else wants to here because they are either too difficult, too enormous in picture scale, too expensive (some of the Americans) but are still doing great things; and I want to make new collectors of the young rich and … aristocracy who have been neglected too long.”46

  The finished space was like a temple, with sophisticated fluorescent lighting designed to boost and balance the daylight, which came from a lantern in the roof, electrically operated louvred blinds, and state-of-the-art flooring, a kind of hard-wearing rubbery linoleum, made by Pirelli. (Annoyingly for Kasmin, large numbers of people turned up to look at the floor rather than the pictures.) The Kasmin Gallery opened on 17 April 1963 with a show of concentric circle paintings by Kenneth Noland, Kasmin’s favourite artist. It was a glittering evening during which the art world rubbed shoulders with the worlds of society and the aristocracy, and was followed by a party given by Claus von Bülow in Belgrave Square. “First show over,” Kasmin wrote to the American art critic Clement Greenberg, “and trying to assess the effect here—great attendance and discussion; generally vapid reviews … the world of painters and students very excited and keen; the general public mostly discussed the beauty of the gallery and its lighting—concrete results are a couple of sales and the Tate discussing a possible purchase … Nevertheless it was my idea of a
success.”47

  John Kasmin and Lord Dufferin in the Kasmin Gallery (illustration credit 5.2)

  In August, passing through London en route to Paris, a trip that Hockney was taking them on as a treat, Ken and Laura got their first view of both the gallery and Kasmin. “We went to Bond Street,” wrote Laura on 16 August, “where J. Kasmin, Hockney’s agent, has his gallery. Not very large—but wonderfully modern—with engine-manoeuvred lattice ceiling blinds which commanded light and sunshine in any part of the room … White walls and black beams were very striking—also two pictures? in entire black for £500. Mr. Kasmin is a small energetic person—full of vitality—he suggested we had an evening playing ‘Poker’—which David evidently does (I hope not often). One wonders!”

  Hockney’s gambling habits were not the only thing on Laura’s mind that day. A few months earlier, the satirical magazine Private Eye, which, launched in 1961 by Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard, had brought back into public life a strain of public insult and personal vilification not seen in England since the eighteenth century, had run a full-page spoof newspaper story titled “How to Spot a Possible Homo,” under the byline Lionel Crane. “The Admiralty, the Foreign Office and MI5 don’t seem to know,” ran the headline, “so the Sunday Mirror offers them some useful advice.” There had then followed a mixture of cartoons and photographs depicting various scenarios, such as…“The man in the bar who drinks alone and is forever looking at other customers over the top of his glass”; “the middle-aged man unmarried who has an unnaturally strong affection for his mother”; “the man who is adored by older women” (this one accompanied by a photo of the prime minister, Harold Macmillan); and “the Obvious those who dye their hair, touch up their lips and walk with a gay little wiggle.”48

  The scenario titled “The Toucher—the man who is always putting his hand on another man’s shoulder or arm” was accompanied by a photograph of Hockney with his hand resting on the shoulder of the figure modelled by Mo in Life Painting for a Diploma. Hockney’s brother John saw the piece and mentioned something about it to Laura, before getting cold feet about telling her the content. She was determined to find out, however, so she had asked Paul if he knew what it was about. “John … tantalizingly refused to unfold,” she wrote on 12 August. “Paul told me—but he did not believe it was true—I can’t think so either. So I commend my boy to God and leave it to Him.”49

  An agreement existed between Hockney and Kasmin that he should have his first one-man exhibition at the new gallery as soon as he had enough paintings completed, and his next trip abroad provided the final picture for the show. One morning Hockney received a call from Mark Boxer at the Sunday Times. The previous autumn, Boxer had commissioned some drawings for a piece on colonial governors; his new idea was a series in which well-known artists visited and drew places that had a special meaning for them: would Hockney be interested in going back to Bradford? When Hockney heard that Philip Sutton was being sent to Tahiti and Jan Haworth to California, his response was that he’d only just escaped from Bradford, which was far too J. B. Priestley, and he’d rather go somewhere more exotic. Instead he suggested the furthest place away he could think of and said, “I’ll go to Honolulu; I’ll draw the view from the top of the Honolulu Hilton.”50 Boxer consulted his art critic, David Sylvester, who reminded him of the interest Hockney had shown as a student in Egyptian art; the following day, he called back to suggest it, an idea Hockney accepted eagerly. Travelling alone, Hockney left London on 26 September, wearing a white suit, a white cap and sporting a polka-dot bow tie.

  Hockney’s initial experience of Egypt was of five-star luxury in Cairo, having been accommodated by the Sunday Times in the first Hilton to open in the Middle East. He couldn’t wait to draw the view from his window, and the resulting image, View from the Nile Hilton, precisely captures the snatched excited glance out of the window that is the first thing any tourist does on being shown their room. It has a lightly sketched palm tree and the outlines of four figures in djellabas crossing the street, but the central image, which dominates the picture and roots the viewer in the country that the artist was so longing to see, is a greatly exaggerated Egyptian flag billowing in the wind, inviting the tourist to leave the international confines of the hotel and come down and explore.

  Over the next three weeks Hockney did just that, and the set of beautiful coloured crayon drawings with which he returned to England show him at his skilful and inventive best. This was the first time since his student days at Bradford that he had drawn consistently from life over a long period, and the drawings cover many subjects on his travels from Cairo to Alexandria and finally to Luxor. Among them are an apartment in an eighteenth-century house in Cairo belonging to Mr. Milo, a Russian, who gave tours to selected groups, and which was full of “wonderful spaces and marvellous objects” and where the tranquil sound of a courtyard fountain was omnipresent; two Arab boys walking down a street in Luxor, one wearing a green-striped djellaba, the other sketched in pencil, with his left hand resting on his companion’s shoulder; a book of matches with “These Matches Belong to David Hockney” written on it in Arabic script; a number of objects in the Cairo Museum; and a Shell garage in Luxor, an image made particularly striking by the larger-than-life head of President Nasser painted on the wall next to the Shell sign.

  “It was a marvellous three weeks,” Hockney remembers. “I didn’t take a camera, only drawing paper, so I drew everywhere and everything, the Pyramids, modern Egypt, it was terrific. I was very turned on by the place, and on your own you do a lot more work. I carried all my drawings everywhere and a lot of equipment, and I would get up very early in the morning. I loved the cafe life. Egyptians are very easy-going people, very humorous and pleasant, and I liked them very much. It was a great adventure.”51

  The drawings were due to run in the 24 November edition of the Sunday Times magazine, but a world-shattering event intervened. “President Kennedy has been assassinated,” wrote Laura in her diary on 22 November. “Died in hospital 25 mins later. Came thro on TV at 7.10 this evening … The world feels cold with shock. One can sense the feeling of horror everywhere even to the far ends of the earth.”52 At the Sunday Times, the magazine and twenty-eight pages of the paper had already gone to print, but the editor, Denis Hamilton, was decisive. “These would all have to be cancelled,” he wrote, “and the paper torn to pieces and remade if the Sunday Times was to give the event the coverage it felt it deserved.”53 Out went Hockney’s drawings of Egypt and in came an album of Kennedy family photographs that Mark Boxer had been saving for a rainy day.

  By this time, however, Hockney was too excited to be upset about the story being dropped. He had decided to use the money from Alecto to make a long trip to the land of his dreams: California. He also had two upcoming exhibitions to think about—his first one-man show at the Kasmin Gallery, and a simultaneous showing of A Rake’s Progress at the Print Centre in Holland Street, Kensington—and he was working hard to finish his last picture, a six-foot-square oil inspired by his visit to the Pyramids at Giza, called Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head. In it a man in a green striped djellaba stands beside a broken monumental head lying beside a palm tree in front of one of the Great Pyramids. Hockney had decided that all the paintings in his show should have figures in them, thus distinguishing him from the purely abstract painters that made up the rest of Kasmin’s stable, and giving him the title of the exhibition, Paintings with People in.

  Kasmin gave Hockney complete control when it came to organising his show, his only involvement being to put him together with Gordon House, a painter who was also one of the best graphic designers in England, and who had designed all the catalogues for the Marlborough Gallery. Together they designed both the catalogue for the show and the invitation to the private view. Kasmin also made sure that the press got wind of what was going on. “David is in the news this week,” Laura noted in her diary on 1 December. “A whole page in this month’s Studio and his exhibitions are announced in
the Sunday Times. Also next Sunday ‘The Critics’ on the Home Service discuss his Exhibition. David has not yet let us know if and when we can go.” Two days later she was bemoaning the fact that he was increasingly difficult to get hold of. “About 7 p.m. we rang his flat, but again there was no reply—Why?!! Well!! When we turned round there he was on ‘BBC Tonight’ programme speaking to Kenneth Allsop who was questioning him about his pictures—some oil paintings and 6 of his Rakes Progress engravings were compared with Hogarth. It was very thrilling to see him there. It makes me choke with a queer mixture of pride & humility that he is our boy. God bless him—may he make good & do good with his success.”54

  Paintings with People in opened on 6 December. There were ten paintings on show, all the works he had completed since leaving the Royal College, including The Hypnotist, Domestic Scene, Notting Hill, Two Men in a Shower, Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head and Play Within a Play, as well as many drawings. The paintings were priced between £250 and £400, which Kasmin regarded as “a reasonable price rather than a high-fashion price. We also wanted them to go to the right places, people that we liked and who really liked them and weren’t playing games. The fact was that Hockney’s work sold briskly from the word go and we could always have asked more.”55 Anticipating a large crowd at the private view, Kasmin had persuaded the newspaper vendor from whom he regularly bought his Evening Standard, who had a stand on the corner of Bond Street and Grosvenor Street, to come and be the commissionaire on the front door. “The evening was a wonderful mixture of art people, gay people and society people,” Kasmin remembers, “and the show was a big success. There were people, of course, who thought it was thin and over-praised, Francis Bacon for one. He thought Hockney was overrated, though I think he was also rather peeved at the amount of attention he was getting.”56