1980

1980

Parade triple bill

For the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Hockney is at work on an upcoming triple bill of Eric Satie’s ballet Parade and two short operas, Francis Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias and Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges. He is [NESTED]invited by director John Dexter to design the production; the project also brings into his orbit the young design assistant Ian Falconer.

Punchinellos Changing Blocks from "L'enfant et les sortilèges", 1980

Parade

Model for Backdrop from "Parade Triple Bill"

Harlequin against Gold from "Parade Triple Bill"

Acrobat and Doctori from "Parade Triple Bill"

Jazz Dancers with Punchinello from "Parade Triple Bill"

Costume Sketches from "Parade Triple Bill"

Chinese Conjuror from "Parade Triple Bill"

Les mamelles de Tirésias

Picasso Stage Manager from "Parade Triple Bill"

Curtain with Curved Stage from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Stage Study from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Babies with Husbands from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Poiret Gowns from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Poiret Gowns from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Coats from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

After Poiret from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Le Journalist from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Mens Chorus from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Female Chorus from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Punchinello with Baby from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Studies for Props from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

Baby Carriage with Baby from "Les mamelles de Tirésias"

L’enfant et les sortilèges

Punchinello Head for 'Parade Triple Bill' from "Hockney Paints the Stage"

Teapot from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Punchinellos Changing Blocks from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Punchinello with Applause from "Parade Triple Bill"

Cubist Punchinella from "Parade Triple Bill"

The Room with Singers from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Principal Singers II from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Principal Singers from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

The Room from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Shepherds and Shepherdesses Dancing Off the Wall from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Princess with Book (2nd Version) from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Mr. Arithmetic I from "Parade Triple Bill"

The Garden with Singers from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

The Garden from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Moth from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Frog from "L'enfant et les sortilèges"

Picasso, music, and dance

Hockney sees two major Picasso exhibitions: a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Picasso from the Musée Picasso at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Impressed by the immediacy of the paintings and Picasso’s prolific production—“It’s like the National Gallery [NESTED]all painted by one man .... No artist ever left such incredible evidence of his experience before; it’s like Rembrandt, Piero, Van Gogh, and Degas all in one”—Hockney once more takes Picasso’s model to heart, rapidly producing numerous canvases representing music and dance.

I still had things to do for Parade, but the exhibition affected me so much I thought, God, if you want to paint, just paint. I thought, if Picasso was here, what he would do would be to make paintings of the sets instead of doing them as gouache—so that’s what I did.

Parade Curtain after Picasso from "Parade Triple Bill"

Picasso Horse for John Dexter from "Parade Triple Bill"

Horse for 'Parade' from "Parade Triple Bill"

Different views of L.A.

In the autumn, back in L.A., Hockney is challenging himself to approach landscape painting afresh through L.A.’s urban-yet-wild setting, as experienced by car, the [NESTED]quintessential means of locomotion in the city. He sets out to represent the journey required to descend from the high perch of his house in the Hollywood Hills to his studio, and completes two grand paintings: Nichols Canyon and Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio. The latter is his largest painting on a single canvas.

Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, 1980

You drive around the painting, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, or your eye does, and the speed it goes at is about the speed of the car going along the road. That’s the way you experience it.

The moment you live up here, you get a different view of Los Angeles. First of all these wiggly lines seem to enter your life, and they entered the paintings. I began Nichols Canyon. I took a large canvas and drew a wiggly line down the middle which is what the roads seem to be. I was living up the hills and painting in my studio down the hills, so I was traveling back and forth every day, often two, three, four times a day. I actually felt those wiggly lines.

Flowers

The Conversation

Dr. Leon Banks

Exhibitions

Solo

Drawings, André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY, USA (Apr 3–26).
Lithographs 1978–1980, Tyler Graphics, New York, NY, USA (Jun 1980); catalogue.
Travels with Pen, Pencil and Ink, Tate Gallery, London, UK (Jul 2–Aug 25); catalogue.
David Hockney, André Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY, USA (Oct 4–22).
David Hockney, Knoedler/Kasmin Gallery, London, UK (opens Oct 7, 1980).
Twenty-Two Lithographs: Pools, Palm Trees, Portraits and Flowers 1978–1980, L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, USA (Nov 19, 1980–Jan 6, 1981).

Group

Contemporary Printed Art: A View of Two Decades, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA (Feb 14–Apr 1); catalogue.
Summer Exhibition Part II, L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, USA (Aug 19–Sep 13).

Publications

Publications

David Hockney: 23 Lithographs 1978-1980, Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, NY: Tyler Graphics Ltd..
Paper Pools, by David Hockney, London: Thames & Hudson.