Tag: art world

Join us on April 29 for a virtual conversation with Kimberli Gant, Candice Hopkins, and Caroline Liou.

Rounding the entrance to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, there is a string of neon pink text affixed to the building’s sail-like structure. “Do remember, they can’t cancel the spring,” it reads. The phrase, inscribed in the prolific British artist David Hockney’s signature scrawl, reads both as an injunction and a welcome balm in these uncertain times. It’s also a fitting prelude to the foundation’s spring presentation: a monumental, career-spanning survey of Hockney’s ever-elastic work, entitled “David Hockney 25.” The exhibition, which runs through August 31, 2025, is co-curated by the foundation’s director, Suzanne Pagé, and famed British curator, Sir Norman Rosenthal. Significantly, the artist himself was also closely involved in the organization and hanging of the show. On view are more than 400 works in a variety of media, including oil and acrylic painting, pencil and charcoal drawing, digital art, and immersive video installations, all made between 1955 and 2025.

Hockney has always avoided categorizing himself with specific styles or movements. Instead, he’s concerned more with capturing the subtle nuances of what he sees. While his practice is sometimes grouped with Pop art, he grew exhausted with the label in the 1960s and ’70s. Instead, he is propelled forward by his enthusiasm for his work, often made in “cycles” that respond to new circumstances or surroundings: He loves making things and always being in the studio. Even at 87 years old, and in spite of health issues stemming from his beloved cigarettes, the indefatigable artist has no intention of slowing down. Indeed, some works in the show were made so recently that they didn’t make the print deadline for the exhibition catalogue.

“David teaches us how to really see what’s in front of us: the leaves, the flowers in springtime, and the everyday things in life. Often we look, but we don’t really see,” Pagé told Artsy. “But I hope that people come away from this exhibition holding onto that miraculous feeling…to recognize the beauty in the mundane, which they carried within themselves all along. That is David’s gift that he’s given back to all of us.”

In celebration of his latest exhibition, Artsy has selected some of his most iconic works that are on view in the Paris show.

Portrait of My Father, 1955

Portrait of My Father (1955) is one of Hockney’s earliest known works, painted when he was 18 years old, and an example of the artist’s early promise in portraiture.

Hockney showed an interest in art from his childhood in Bradford, England, and he decided at the age of 11 that he wanted to be an artist. He was always engaging with his surroundings, and his talents were encouraged by his parents, who arranged for private lessons. At 16, he enrolled in the Bradford School of Art, a modest institution that emphasized traditional methods of drawing from observation and figurative work, which is where he discovered his love of painting. During this period, Hockney would push around a cart filled with painting materials all around Bradford, capturing the city in the shadows of World War II. Upon graduating, he realized that his training had emphasized only traditional styles of painting and drawing, and enrolled in the Royal College of Art in London in 1959 to be closer to a more modern style of making art.

This work was exhibited as a part of the “Yorkshire Arts Exhibition” at Leeds Art Gallery, and was the first work Hockney ever sold: an early milestone for an artist whose works now sell for tens of millions. His painting Portrait Of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures) (1972), sold at Christie’s New York in 2018 for $90.3 million (including fees): at the time, the most expensive work to ever sell at auction by a living artist.

A Bigger Splash, 1967

“When you think of California, of course there is Ed Ruscha and a number of American artists, but most people, when they think of California visually, they think of David Hockney,” Rosenthal told Artsy.

Following his university years during the “Swinging Sixties” in London, Hockney was seduced by the hedonistic promise of California, with its sense of rebellion and tolerance for homosexuality, which was still illegal in England at the time. He first moved to L.A. in early 1964, prompted by his embrace of his sexuality as well as his youthful interest in Hollywood films. Hockney would go on to stay there for almost four decades.

Hockney has an enduring fascination with Los Angeles’s swimming pools, palm trees, houses, sunshine, and people, portraying L.A. as an endless paradise that lives on in the mind’s eye. This flattened, luminous vision of Southern California is most notably immortalized in A Bigger Splash (1967). The piece represents a departure from Hockney’s previous work, which was more abstract in its expression and employed darker palettes. Painted from an advertisement for swimming pools Hockney came across in a magazine, the painting shows a pool with the splash of someone who has just jumped in.

As such, the painting seems to have no subject—a rarity for his paintings at the time. This anonymity invites intrigue, as viewers imagine who may have just dived in, or feel the rush of springing from a diving board themselves into cool water beneath the heat of the California sun. But it is the ephemeral moment, those split seconds in the aftermath of a subject puncturing the water’s surface, that most intrigued Hockney. Fascinated by the interplay between water and light, he has produced many works featuring swimming pools, rendering them each time in a different style, including in Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966); Pool and Steps, Le Nid du Duc (1971); and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972).

Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, 1971

A key work from Hockney’s series of double portraits, Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1971) captures the artist’s friends, fashion designers Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, shortly after their marriage. Said to have been a wedding present for the couple, the painting breaks from traditional marriage portraiture that typically sees the female seated: in this depiction, it is Birtwell who stands, while Clark lounges in the chair. The two subjects look directly at the viewer, inviting them into not only their bedroom where the painting is set, but also into their marriage. Percy, of course, is the cat, visible on Clark’s lap. The portrait also signals the brewing tension between them: The couple split not long after.

Birtwell has been a longtime muse for Hockney; she has appeared in nearly 30 of his portraits over the years, and each picture renders her in a different style. Capturing the same subject matter over and again is a hallmark of Hockney’s, and shows his interest in marking the passage of time.

Between 1968 and 1975, Hockney created seven landmark double paintings, including one of novelist Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy. At seven feet high, these paintings are nearly life-size. Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1971) was quickly heralded as one of Hockney’s early masterpieces, and shortly after its completion it was added to the collection of the Tate. The work marks a pivotal moment for Hockney upon his return to London after his California years. The work “is, in his own estimation, as close as he gets to naturalism,” reads the exhibition catalogue.

A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998

In the summer of 1997, Hockney took a road trip through the American southwest and returned to the Grand Canyon, a subject that fascinated him for decades. He first photographed the natural wonder in 1982 with his Pentax 110 camera when he was exploring photographic collages. He loved using the camera as a medium and a drawing tool, capturing a subject at different angles and distances, in homage to the Cubists.

But following his pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon during that summer in the late ’90s, Hockney decided to paint it from memory upon his return to his studio in Los Angeles. This culminated in his masterpiece, A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998), that unfolds across 60 smaller canvases assembled together in a grid. “I’d just think about this space…it is about the only place on earth that really makes you look in every direction. You feel small. And the longer you look the more thrilling it becomes,” he said, in an exhibition catalogue for a show at L.A. Louver in 1998.

The work is a celebration of the epic scale of American landscape and employs a more pigmented, bold palette than he used in his previous works, a new style he developed in the mid to late ’90s as he spent time back in Yorkshire following the death of his dear friend, American sculptor Jonathan Silver.

Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, 2007

Bigger Trees near Warter or ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique (2007) is Hockney’s largest work to date, made upon his return to Yorkshire following the death of his mother. There’s a certain melancholy to the piece, with the trees barren of their leaves following a long winter. Nonetheless, a patch of daffodils peeks through, emblematic of the fleeting beauty of life.

The work is celebrated not only for its monumental scale—measuring over 40 feet wide and comprising 50 canvases—but also for its depth of detail that is typically attributed to historical, religious, mythological, or allegorical works like Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), or Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830). Hockney’s masterpiece devotes that same meticulous care to the coming of spring. He constructed the painting from many different perspectives, beginning with drawings and paintings made en plein air, which he then scanned and assembled on the computer to capture the scale.

“I’d go and sit there for three hours at a time just looking up at the branches, lying down practically so I looked up,” Hockney once explained of the work, which was the fixture of the Royal Academy of London’s 2007 “Summer Exhibition,” where it spanned the length of the gallery’s walls. “It needed a hell of a lot of planning, but we did it rather quickly. The deadline wasn’t the “Summer Exhibition.” The deadline was the arrival of spring.”

27th March 2020, No. 1, 2020

The first wave of Covid lockdowns, which Hockney spent in Normandy, was a period of prolific output for the artist. 27th March 2020, No. 1 (2020) marked a new medium for the artist, which has become one of his trademarks: the iPad. He purchased his first iPad in 2010 and was instantly captivated by its ability to let him render scenes with an immediacy not found in traditional media. He could capture the shifting light, or make instant revisions, and would often send pictures off to family and friends via email upon their completion. Hockney has become a champion of the technology and often muses that should Van Gogh have had access to an iPad, he most certainly would have used it.

In those dark Covid times, this image provided joy and a moment of levity as it ricocheted around the internet. The work was later made into a print and mounted on aluminum. This process reinforces Hockney’s understanding of the tablet as a serious tool for image making, just as valid as paintbrushes, pencils, or crayons.

The subject of the work is one of Hockney’s favorites: the arrival of spring. “David is passionate about life, and one of the great things in life is the coming of spring,” noted Rosenthal. “He is fascinated by the spring, yes, but also by the winter, by night, by storms, by the moon; by everything that is in front of his eyes. He has found his own way of representing the randomness of existence and the randomness of nature; he’s very aware of death but above all he is also aware of life, and the preciousness of life and that nothing is ever the same.”

Thankfully, there were no vacant walls at the Dallas Art Fair 2025 when its VIP preview opened on Thursday, April 10th. The preceding week had been a “flutter of nerves,” according to the fair’s director, Kelly Cornell: President Trump’s April 2nd announcement of sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports, and their potential implications for the art trade, presented a touchy set of circumstances for galleries shipping artwork and other materials. The measures, which caused widespread confusion and panic when they were announced, were set to go into effect on April 9th; empty booths seemed like a real possibility.

That crisis was ultimately averted, and some 93 galleries, spanning 53 cities and 21 countries, filled out the fair. Across two floors of the Fashion Industry Gallery in the Dallas Arts District—just around the corner from the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA)—a local-leaning crowd of VIPs circulated in a fluttery parade of sundresses, sneakers, and Southern drawls. But even on an otherwise bright and balmy day, economic clouds loomed: After almost a week of freefall, U.S. stock markets had rebounded on Wednesday, following Trump’s pause of his most aggressive “reciprocal” tariffs (with the exception of those on China), only to nosedive again on Thursday in the hours leading up to the fair’s opening.

Still, economic angst couldn’t extinguish enthusiasm for the event. Now in its 17th edition, the fair is a marquee moment for the city’s rich arts ecosystem—an increasingly interconnected web of well-regarded local institutions like the Nasher, the DMA, the Dallas Contemporary, and the Kimbell Art Museum in nearby Fort Worth; and a growing crop of commercial galleries. The city is best known for its pool of storied collectors with serious blue-chip credentials, but it has seen an influx of newer participants enter its art scene, too. Evidencing this growth, the Dallas Art Fair now has a satellite—the Dallas Invitational, founded in 2023—and will get a second in 2026, when Salon Art + Design launches its Dallas edition in March.

At the main fair, local pride is palpable. Even as it draws an increasingly broad range of exhibitors and visitors, it’s “still firmly supported by the region: Oklahoma, Santa Fe, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio,” said Cornell. “That’s really a strength for us, that [galleries] bring works that remain in this region.” Case in point: Since 2016, the DMA has allocated a total of $965,000 to acquire works for its permanent collection directly from the fair. This year, the museum selected works by Sanlé Sory (shown by Yossi Milo Gallery), Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka (Patel Brown), Fu Xiaotong (Alisan Fine Arts), Tina Girouard (Anat Ebgi), Eduardo Sarabia (OMR), and Eri Imamura (Turner Carroll).

Dr. Valerie Bennett, the owner of hometown gallery Pencil on Paper, was born and raised in the city, and has been coming to the fair since it started. “There are little pockets of magic happening in Dallas, and the Dallas Art Fair has always been the foundation of it all,” she said. Included in her gallery’s group presentation are works on paper by Jessica Vollrath, a local artist who paints lyrical portraits of her family. A number of the artist’s works had pre-sold, according to Bennett; those that were still available near the end of VIP day were priced in the mid-four figures. Vollrath has a concurrent solo show on view at the South Dallas Cultural Center, another institution that bolsters the city’s creative community. “We have solid museums and institutions,” said Bennett, “But we could be greater than what we are now, and I think we’re going in that direction.”

One factor undoubtedly contributing to the city’s momentum is the increased spending power of its residents. Dallas has seen an 85% growth in its population of millionaires over the past decade, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing wealth hubs. And the diversity of industries that constitute the city’s local economy makes it relatively well positioned in times of economic precarity: Historically, Dallas has been steadier during recessions than other major cities. The longevity of the fair, despite its founding in the throes of the global financial crisis in 2009, exemplifies this resilience.

Angel, 2024
Celia Eberle

Cris Worley Fine Arts

Paw , 2024
Celia Eberle

Cris Worley Fine Arts

Perhaps that’s why local dealers, like Bennett and Cris Worley, seemed in relatively sunny spirits, despite macroeconomic misgivings. “On the one hand, I’m really excited, but on the other hand, there’s a lot of uncertainty, so there’s anxiety,” said Worley, who founded her eponymous gallery in 2010. Ultimately, she said, “you have to be optimistic when you know what your mission is, which is to support the artists and bring their message forward.” Her presentation featured works by upwards of 20 artists from the gallery’s program, including Dallas artist Celia Eberle, whose small, visceral sculptures made of paper and found objects were hung along the booth’s back wall. Two hours into the preview, that wall was freckled with red dots indicating that Eberle’s works—all priced under $1,000—had sold.

Despite Texans’ reputed fondness for everything big, small works like Eberle’s stood out across the fair. At New York gallery Alexander Berggruen’s booth, visitors flocked to petite, wall-based ceramics by Kevin McNamee-Tweed, irresistibly charming due to their whimsy and tactility (most had sold midway through VIP day). Nearby, the New York- and Miami-based gallery Andrew Reed was showing postcard-sized paintings by Dan Attoe, who renders the tiny details of his cinematic vistas using a single-hair brush. One of these, Summer Night Work Break (2025), sold at the preview with an asking price of $6,000.

This is the young gallery’s second-ever fair, and founder Reed said he was drawn to Dallas by the strong reputation of its collectors. Though art fairs are taxing endeavors for small galleries at the best of times, Reed struck a hopeful note while simultaneously pulling out his phone to check his stock portfolio. Collectors are “holding back, to a degree, because this is all discretionary spending at the end of the day,” he said. “But I do like to think that, even in our volatile economic situation, people want to do things that make them feel good—and buying art, looking at art, is one of those things.”

Duarte Sequeira is another first-timer at the fair, making his debut in a joint booth with London’s The Sunday Painter. With gallery locations in Seoul, London, and Braga, Portugal, Sequeira stands to be heavily impacted by tremors in international trade. “The mood was quite tough when we arrived,” he acknowledged. “It’s definitely not the best moment in the world.” The two galleries are showing a solo presentation of the British painter Patrick H Jones, whose work matches the current moment: His paintings of racehorses, their body parts spliced and multiplied across the canvas, offer a visual metaphor for the competitive and chaotic nature of contemporary life.

6/2 Finish, 2025
Patrick H Jones

Duarte Sequeira

Headquartered in Hong Kong and founded in the 1980s, Alisan Fine Arts is no stranger to the throes of a trade war. Daniel Chen, the director of the gallery’s New York location, noted that he had previously lobbied for art to be exempt from tariffs imposed on Chinese goods during the first Trump administration. “We’re watching it very, very closely,” he said of the escalating trade conflict with China, and noted the “dampened” mood produced by the downturn in the broader art market.

Still, the gallery had cause to celebrate: One of the works in its booth—150,048 Pinpricks 150,048 孔 (2023), by Fu Xiaotong—was among those acquired by the DMA. The artist works with handmade Xuan paper, producing images using tiny pinholes. By piercing the paper at different angles, she creates textural contrasts through which figures, such as mountains or faces, emerge. Fu sources her materials from China, works in Berlin, and is now exhibiting in the U.S.—a poignant example of the global nature of art production, which Chen says must be preserved. “Art is one of those things that should be a cultural exchange,” he said. “It’s not car parts.”

A Veil Drawn Beside, 2025
Sophia Anthony

Make Room

That sentiment—about the importance of cross-cultural circulation—was echoed by Emilia Yin, whose gallery, Make Room, is making its debut at the fair this year. The L.A.-based gallery works with a number of international artists, particularly those from the Asian diaspora. Among those represented in its booth are Sun Woo, a Korean Canadian painter whose featured work, The Reach (2024), feels at once gothic and futuristic; and Xin Liu, a Chinese multimedia artist (and Artsy Vanguard alum) whose work considers the body through the lens of technology. For Yin, the breadth of the gallery’s program is essential to its mission. “Especially during a political climate like this, it’s important to share what could be a different, diverse way of thinking and understanding the world,” she said. “So we’ll continue to support a diverse, very international group of artists.”