'The world has lost a genius and I have lost a friend': Andrew Marr's poignant tribute to David Hockney
The modern world is strangely short of genius; in David Hockney, the leading painter of our times, we have lost a genuine genius.
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David emerged like a shooting star from the Royal College in London in the 1960s, defiantly ignoring the trendy abstractionism of that period in favour of colourful, provocative pictures about sex, beauty and having fun.
Since then, his peroxide hair, colourful glasses and wildly checked suits have been part of popular culture, as well as serious art, all around the world.
He was almost ludicrously talented – one of those people with an innate ability to draw perfectly, and when he needed to, from memory; and with a natural understanding of the rhythms and balance needed for good pictures.
He could have been any kind of artist – an aristocratic portraitist, a pop art hero, a traditional master of landscape. But he was too ambitious for any of that, always trying to do something new, different, never attempted before. He wanted to reshape the way we all see, in the way that the French impressionists, or before them, the masters of the Italian Renaissance, had done.
To this end, Hockney ransacked the art traditions from other parts of the world, from China and Japan and ancient Egypt; and set his hand on any fresh technology he thought would help him make new pictures – fax machines, new kinds of printing, iPads, movie cameras fixed to the front of moving cars.
From tiny, exquisite portrait drawings to vast immersive experiences, his art was genuinely popular, reaching households which were closed to any other kind of modern art.
But he wasn’t simplistic or naïve, nor was he interested in popularity for its own sake. He was a deeply thoughtful, well-read, and curious man, generous in his opinions and fascinated by the world around him.
Perhaps because of his slightly forbidding father, who was a fanatical anti-smoking campaigner, David was a lifelong natural anarchist and rule breaker, with a deep suspicion of all authority.
He was also the kindest and most enjoyable of companions. The world has lost a genius; I have lost a friend; and London seems a little darker already.
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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.
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