David Hockney at Contemporary Art & Design

David Hockney, 'Flowers for a Wedding'

David Hockney was still a student at the Royal College of Art in London when his work began to attract notice in 1962. For two years in a row Hockney’s work had featured in the Young Contemporaries at the RBA Galleries in London. The 25-year-old with the bleached mop of hair and huge horn-rimmed glasses had stirred up the art scene in the London Swinging Sixties.

For his graduation Hockney had refused to paint a female model from life as was required by the Royal College of Art. Instead, he rounded the rules and copied a muscleman out of a magazine. To prove that he mastered anatomy drawing he stuck one of his early studies of a skeleton on to it. Across the top he added the painted typography ‘Physique’ referring to the magazine name Physique Pictorial. Hockney was awarded a Gold Medal distinction which he received wearing a gold lamé jacket to the ceremony.

Written messages play an important part in Hockney’s work in the 60s. He has described how he was hesitant to use figures in his motifs as the idea was considered very anti-modern in the early 60s. The solution was to enhance the topography of written words and include this new element in his work. Sometimes the lettering appears only as a title like in the painting ‘Berlin: a souvenir’ with the word BERLIN in capitals across the top. On occasion the lettering takes on a meaning, adding a cryptic message as ‘I will love you at 8 pm next Wednesday’ in ‘The Fourth Love Painting” from 1961.

“I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.”

– David Hockney