Hockney biography review
- “Life of David Hockney” is pleasant enough, at turns moving, amusing and engaging.
- This is a chatty, knowledgeable, insider's biography, full of anecdotes – the drawback is that it ends with the subject still in his 30s.
- A biography which entertains as it informs.
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How far can a biography stray from the truth? ‘Life of David Hockney’ pushes that boundary
Over a decade ago, I gave my friend Jane a copy of Catherine Cusset’s novel “The Story of Jane,” mostly because of the title, and she liked it. Recently, Jane heard a feature on NPR about Cusset’s new project on the artist David Hockney and, knowing that he’s one of my favorites, she shared the piece with me. Hockney’s relationship to Los Angeles was love at first sight, as was mine. He loved the light, the textures and colors, and the beautiful people. Especially the men. Many of his best-known works conjure quintessential Los Angeles: palm trees, swimming pools, Modernist architecture. Hockney’s paintings are evocative; they don’t so much capture a place or a person so much as they convey an essence and a vision. Cusset attempts to render Hockney in that way.
The backstory of her book has been a bit sensationalized: the heterosexual, female, French novelist becomes obsessed with gay, male, English artist and writes a novel about a living person. “Life of David Hockney” is a formal experi
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Portrait of an Artist: On Catherine Cusset’s “Life of David Hockney: A Novel”
Geoff Nicholson looks at “Life of David Hockney: A Novel” by Catherine Cusset, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan.
Life of David Hockney by Catherine Cusset. Other Press, 2019. 192 pages.
THE FIRST SERIOUS job I ever had was working for a London-based dealer in literary first editions and authors’ manuscripts, operating from a rather swanky showroom and shop in Covent Garden. One of the directors was George Lawson, a vastly amusing and dapper Scotsman who at the time was dating Wayne Sleep, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet. David Hockney was one of their friends, and he regularly came into the shop. He was working on a double portrait of George and Wayne, and one of the wags in the company said it ought to be a diptych, so that they could each take half when they inevitably split up.
Hockney was already an art star in Britain, although he wasn’t the National Treasure he’s since become. He was twinkly and friendly, and although I was too overawed ever to have much conversation with h
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David Hockney: The Biography, 1975-2012
Hockney was, and is, a great artist, a fine interpreter of his surroundings into something more, but I wasn’t, and still are not, a fan of his work. While this portion of his biography has many illustrations and examples of his art, I just am not moved by it. Hence I am not moved by this look into the life of the arts creator. I was hoping to find a great secret here, some side to the artist as yet unrevealed to me, but what I found was a person like you or me, struggling to come to terms with his environment, perhaps a little too hung up on the exploration of his parents in a search to find himself, but nothing more.
I won this book through Goodreads
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