David Hockney: We will always have Paris.
- Elle Bee
- Nov 13
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
The Fondation LV Retrospective (2025)
The David Hockney 25 exhibition staged by Fondation Louis Vuitton (Fondation LV) ran from 09.04.2025 to 01.09.2025. It brought together more than 400 of his works created from 1955 to 2025. Visitors were greeted with a breathtaking retrospective in a variety of media including oil and acrylic painting, ink, pencil and charcoal drawing, digital art (works on iPhone, iPad, photographic drawings, etc) and immersive video installations.
The Interview and Documentary by the BBC
Watch his 26 minute interview by Katie Razzall. Bradford-born Hockney talks about why painting still makes him happy at ahead of his biggest show in Paris.
For Hockney fans, the broadcasting station's documentary The Art of Seeing offers a wonderful insight on his exhibition A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy, made up of works depicting the landscape of his native Yorkshire.
Hockney exhibition dates for 2026
The Hockney website is a good place to find all upcoming exhibitions.
16 Dec 2025 - 11 Jan 2026, Aviva Studios, Manchester, UK: The vibrant and immersive exhibition Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away). (Ticketed).
12 March 2026 - 23 August 2026, Serpentine North, London, UK: The exhibition will showcase seminal works, shown in the UK for the first time. (Free).
Selected artworks from the exhibition
California Dreaming
Compared to the cramped terraced houses of West Yorkshire and the rainy post-war dereliction of London, Los Angeles represented sunshine, freedom, and strong light. Inspired by old swimming pool cleaning manuals, palm trees, freeways and the space and scale of Southern California, the artist embarked on rendering the city and surrounding landscape in his own vision. Part observation, part fantasy in vivd acrylic.
(Title reference: Song by the Mamas and the Papas. / Text by Fondation LV.)
Multiple Twin Peaks
David Hockney first visited the United States in 1961, when he spent the Summer in New York. He first visited Los Angeles a few years later, and settled there from the mid 1960s. He taught at the Universities of Iowa and Colorado respectively in 1964 and 1965.
(Title reference: inspiration from Twin Peaks, an American surrealist mystery-horror drama television series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost).
Tête-à-tête
This painting of the writer Christopher Isherwood and his companion, the painter Don Bachardy, is one of the most representative of David Hockney's double portraits. Depicted frontally, its quasi-stillness broken only by the movement of Isherwood's head, for the young Hockney they symbolize the freedom of Californian society, where a male couple of different ages could be seen in a relationship that today would be described as "open."
(Title meaning: a private conversation between two people. / Text by Fondation LV.)
A long way from Route 66
Driving north from Los Angeles, Hockney stopped along the Pearblossom Highway. There turning around on the spot, he aimed his camera at every detail, near and far, taking more than eight hundred photographs of the desert landscape surrounding him, encompassing the entire panorama, which he recomposed in the studio.
According to the artist, this work was inspired by the way Cubist painters recomposed their subject from separate elements.
The original collage of this print, created for this exhibition, is kept at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
(Title reference: (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" is a popular rhythm and blues song, composed in 1946 by American songwriter Bobby Troup. / Text by Fondation LV.)
All about Chairs
The Chair from 1985 powerfully fuses an eloquent tribute to past masters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso with the striking subversion of traditional perspective that defines many of Hockney’s masterworks.
(Text by Fondation LV.)
Clockwise:
1. The Chair by David Hockney (1985). Private collection.
2. Van Gogh’s Chair by Vincent Van Gogh (1888). National Gallery Collection, London.
3. Gauguin’s chair by Vincent Van Gogh (1888). Van Gogh Museum Collection, Amsterdam.
Me, Myself and David
Left to right:
Play Within a Play Within a Play and
Me with a Cigarette, 2025
Self Portrait Standing with Red Braces, 2005
Self Portrait, 10th December 2021
(Title reference: inspiration from Me, Myself & Irene - a 2000 American slapstick black comedy film produced, co-written, and directed by the Farrelly brothers.
Mirror, Mirror
Self Portraits, 2012
Top to bottom and left to right
No. 1200, 13th March 2012
Self Portrait IV, 25th March 2012
No. 1223, 21st March 2012
Self Portrait I, 13th March 2012
Self Portrait II, 16th March 2012
No. 1203, 14th March 2012
Self Portrait, 19th April 2012
Self Portrait I, 25th March 2012
No. 1216, 17th March 2012
No. 1194, 12th March 2012
Self Portrait II, 14th March 2012
Self Portrait, 10th March 2012
No. 1244, 6th April 2012
No. 1204, 15th March 2012
Self Portrait III, 20th March 2012
iPad drawings printed on paper, mounted on aluminium
(Title reference for Star Trek fans: A famous 1967 episode where Captain Kirk and his crew are transported to an evil parallel universe.)
Into the Woods
The complex process leading to the creation of this work—Hockney's largest to date— included several stages, beginning with meticulous observation, followed by a plein air preparatory sketoh for defining the framing of each of the fifty canvases. Then a sketched grid of the entire composition was produced , to guide the process. The goal was not to enlarge a sketoh but to paint on the spot, spontaneously and immediately, as the painters of the Barbizon School and the Impressionists had done. Hockney worked on six panels at the same time, which were then photographed, scanned, and combined on a computer to give an overall view.
There were many challenges: Hookney's studio was then in the attic of his mother's house in Bridlington, and its size was such that only six paintings could be viewed at one time. Given oil paint's lengthy drying time, the trunk of the car that was being used to transport the works had to be adapted to carry canvases that were still wet. Working with the constraint of spring's arrival, which would of course transform the trees, Hookney completed the painting in six weeks, showing it in the summer of 2007 at the Royal Academy in London, before donating it to the Tate.
(Title reference: Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s dazzling musical. / Text by Fondation LV.)
Perspectives
This work, painted in March 2008, represents the same trees that can be seen above, while here they are seen in perspective in the grove's depths.
(Text by Fondation LV.)
Yorkshire Lad
Top to bottom, left to right
Rudston Trees II, 29 July 2005
Kilham to Langtoft, 2 August 2005
Langtoft to Kilham, 31 July 2005
Sledmere to Malton, 3 August 2005
Woldgate Vista, 27 July 2005
Kilham to Langtoft II, 27 July 2005
Kilham, 6 August 2005
Kilham to Langtoft, 25 July 2005
Rudston to S/edmere, August 2005 R
Sledmere View, 7 & 10 August 2005
Untitled, 22 July 2005
Tree Tunnel, August 2005
The Exhibition book
The large scale landscape format book features a selection of archival photographs and eye-catching artworks allied to expertly written text by pre-eminent curatorial experts, art historians and critics.
Compiled with the full involvement of David Hockney and his studio. Published in association with the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
(Updated November 2025)
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