“This is what I see”, says David Hockney, seated opposite me on the other side of the table, his arms wide apart, an unlit cigarette in his left hand. “I see you perfectly, William”, he continues, staring at me. Then he twists his wrists: “And I also see, in a way, my hands. But how to paint that? This is one of his eternal artistic obsessions: how to paint and represent the world as we really see it.
We are seated around an oval table in the living quarters of his studios in Kensington, London. The room is large and cluttered with bric-a-brac. Parquet on the floor, a generous kitchen-dining room-living room overlooked by a mezzanine, and on the walls, a beautiful representation of Hockney’s works. The table itself disappears under a large mess – newspapers, packets of cigarettes, cups of coffee, lighters, an imposing ashtray, a glass, a camera and an iPad.
Turquoise cardigan and yellow Crocs
David Hockney has always been a man on his thirty-one, in a style that I would describe as ostentatious skilfully studied, and today is no exception to the rule. His hair cut short, he wears a dazzling turquoise cardigan over a white shirt trimmed with a thin black and white checkered tie, very on art. Brown tweed trousers and the now famous yellow Crocs complete the ensemble.
The only incongruity in the room, a small structure in steel tubes, covered with a black fabric, rises to the ceiling: it conceals the model of his last and extraordinary adventure, “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)” [“David Hockney : plus grand et plus près (ni plus petit ni plus loin)”].
Hockney is 85 years old, and that makes it sixty-five that he paints. From his energy and his artistic work emerges an intact vitality. The late Hockney never gave up on productivity, and for this latest project he left his home farm in the French countryside and returned to London, where he oversees the installation of the “Bigger & Closer”.
Although he has owned this studio in Kensington since 1974, he admits not having “never really felt at home [lui]” in London. He always preferred his long stays in Los Angeles and Bridlington, in Yorkshire, and today in Normandy. He’s happy there, he says – no distractions. We can concentrate on work.
A project difficult to describe
The new project is precisely the object of all our attention. Hockney invites me to sit in front of the small black-covered scaffolding: below is a stunning scale model of a huge room, located in the bowels of a new building in Lewis Cubitt Square, north of the station of St. Pancras, in the ever-expanding redevelopment area of King’s Cross.
In front of me, three “walls” of 60 × 60 centimeters each delimit the vast cube. In the model, tiny plastic figures give an idea of the true scale of these walls. In a few years, a 600-seat theater is to take place there, but for the moment the place is called Lightroom, this is where “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer” will open [le 22] FEBRUARY.
Hockney takes a seat on my left and lights his cigarette. A computer is running, and on the walls of the model appears the animation of a drawing made by the artist from his Norman farm. Describe
