David Hockney: Britain&#39;s most expensive living artists

David Hockney will turn 80 in July. Tate Britain intends to mark this milestone for the artist, who's career stretches back 60 years. His work spans from the universally- recognised swimming pool art to his more recent oeuvre, drawings on his iPad. The substantial 160 works will travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hockney has already transferred some of his own works estimated at £81.5 million to the David Hockney Foundation and he plans to give further gifts to the Tate, where three of his paintings already hang. In a ﻿2015 documentary, the artist and philanthropist stated that﻿﻿﻿﻿ "he does not want to become a machine for producing items of value."



Just in time for the beloved artist’s 80th birthday (next July 9), Tate Britain will host a massive retrospective for David Hockney in 2017.

As one of Britain’s most expensive living artists, Hockney has had a long, illustrious artistic career, and the museum plans on covering all sixty years’ worth of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and videos.

The show dives deep into his oeuvre—yes, fans of the artist’s homoerotic swimming pool series will be satisfied—with everything from Hockney’s early 1960s love paintings to his most recent ventures, including drawings done on the artist’s iPad.

“We’re looking back over a lifetime with this exhibition,” Hockney told the Guardian. “I hope, like me, people will enjoy seeing how the roots of my new and recent work can be seen in the developments over the years.”

Tate Britain states that the retrospective will be the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition, featuring a number of works that have yet to make their public debuts. The show, which boasts a hefty 160 works, will travel to Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after its premiere.

“We’ve shaped the show and made a selection and then he’s made suggestions and we’ve shifted the emphasis a bit and there are some works he’s asked us to think about,” the exhibition’s co-curator Chris Stephens said to the Guardian.

Hockney’s longtime residence in California earned him two major retrospectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in decades past: David Hockney: A Retrospective in 1988 and David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective in 1996. More recently, in 2013, the DeYoung museum in San Francisco presented a survey of Hockey’s work since 2002.

“David Hockney” will be on view at Tate Britain, February 9–May 29, 2017.

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