Birthday Of An Old(ish) Master

At the age of 60, David Hockney is still putting the colour back in a gloomy world.

The Guardian, April 1997

In a corner of David Hockney’s Los Angeles studio, opposite a new portrait of his wrinkled mother, stands a picture that, when finished, will swiftly make its way to several thousand homes throughout the world. The Tate Gallery wanted a poster to celebrate its centenary, a poster for underground stations and bus shelters and the Tate Shop, and who better to paint it than the most popular British artist alive?

The Tate is 100 this year, Hockney’s mother will be 97, and Hockney will be 60. He says he will try to ignore this milestone, but fears his friends will make such a fuss. ‘I don’t mind getting older’, he says, ‘I don’t hold inquests. I’m not nearly as careerist as some people.’

For him there is a more significant event this year – his first large-scale show in a commercial London gallery for over a decade. It contains tremendous paintings, his most assured work for many years, the experimental theorising of recent pictures now replaced by bold expressions of colour, space and delight. The show opens on election day, a fact that vaguely bemuses him.

‘ You’re talking to a non-voter,’ he says, ‘but I must admit I hate Jack Straw. Thirty years ago he said ‘We don’t know all the facts about marijuana – we can’t legalise it.’ He says the same thing now. But what experience does he have of it? Well I’ve got some. I know it’s perfectly harmless, but they’re still putting people in prison for it.’

Hockney says he keeps in touch with England through the newspapers and friends: 5,000 miles away, Tony Blair strikes him as ‘an eager school prefect, mad for power.’ He drinks his afternoon tea. He adds: ‘You probably need him though, need a change.

to read on download the Adobe PDF