
Flowers and portraits
At Annely Juda Fine Art in London, Hockney’s solo show, Flowers, Faces and Spaces, spotlights his recent flower paintings as well as his “portrait wall” of 24 friends [NESTED] and family members.
Order of the Companions of Honour
Shortly after celebrating his 60th birthday in July in Los Angeles, he returns to England where he is received by Her Majesty the Queen into the Order of the Companions of Honour.

Visiting Jonathan Silver
Having spent the early summer road-tripping through the American Southwest, once again visiting the Grand Canyon, Hockney spends late summer in Yorkshire, where his dear friend Jonathan Silver is in the final stages of cancer. Driving back and forth across Yorkshire to visit Silver—a roundtrip of more than 120 miles between Bridlington and Saltaire—Hockney contemplates how [NESTED]to paint the landscapes of his boyhood, and soon embarks upon a new body of work.
When Jonathan Silver, who ran Salts Mill, the museum of my work at Saltaire near Bradford, got really ill, I came over from L.A. simply because I could see he was dying. He was a close friend. Before Jonathan’s illness we had talked every couple of days on the telephone about art and all manner of things. That was in 1997, and it was the first time I’d stayed in England for a few months since the 1970s. Jonathan lived in Wetherby, which is a very pleasant drive from Bridlington, via York. I was going there every couple of days to visit him, and I started noticing the countryside and how it changed. Because it’s agricultural land around here, the surface of the earth itself is constantly being altered. The wheat grows, then it’s harvested, then you see it ploughed.
In a sense those Yorkshire paintings came out of the ideas of the great spaces of the West, but it did occur to me straightway that Yorkshire is one place where you have enormous vistas ... you can see everything as you drive, from Bridlington to Wetherby, just east of York, down Garrowby Hill and up it again, and I realized here’s a subject and here’s a way to paint it. Jonathan was urging me all the while to "paint Yorkshire." I had never stayed this long in Yorkshire. I was forced to see it afresh.
Painting Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorkshire
To honor Silver’s achievement in fostering the arts and reviving Saltaire’s sense of community, Hockney paints the scene at Salts Mill, the cultural center focused on his work that Silver started in an abandoned building at the heart of the town.
I’d painted Saltaire, for Jonathan; I wanted him to see it as I see it now, and also for him to know how I’d remembered it as well. Salts Mill is about time and the history of the place, and many places like it. By that I mean, for instance, the rows of houses to the right of the Mill never came down the hill like that. You would actually have to be inside the Mill looking out to achieve that perspective effect. But I grew up in Bradford in small terraces jammed together just like that, and I remember Saltaire as a busy working mill—literally the hub of the whole community.
Exhibitions
Solo
- David Hockney, Arij Gasiunasen Gallery, Palm Beach, FL (Feb 14–Mar 10)
- David Hockney, Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo (Apr 4–May 2).
- Flowers, Faces and Spaces, Annely Juda Fine Art, London (May 1–Jul 19); catalogue.
- Snail’s Space with Vari-Lites, “Painting as Performance,” National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. (Jun 6–Sep 14).
- David Hockney, Galerie Kaess-Weiss, Stuttgart (Oct 11–Nov 4).
- David Hockney, Galerie Maurice at Rosenbaum Fine Art Gallery, Boca Raton, FL (Nov 20–Dec 19).
- Memorial Exhibition in Honor of Jonathan Silver, 1853 Gallery, Salts Mill, Saltaire, U.K. (Dec 14–Apr 12).
- Retrospektive Photoworks, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (Dec 19, 1997–Mar 15, 1998); travels to Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna; Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Turin; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Liljevalchs Konsthal, Stockholm; Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (through 2001); catalogue edited by Reinhold Misselbeck with texts by Jochen Poetter, Christophe Blaser, Daniel Girardin, and Anke Solbrig.
Group
- A Ilha do Tesouro / Treasure Island, José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Center/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (Feb 7–May 4).
- Networking: Art by Post and Fax, Spacex Gallery, Exeter (Feb 15–Mar 23); travels to Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery (Apr 19–Jun 1); Dunstable Library (Jun 23–Jul 18); Museum of Reading (Jul 26–Sep 28); Motherwell and Wishaw Libraries, Glasgow (Oct 4–Nov 2); Wakefield Art Gallery (Nov 8–Dec 7); Belfast Waterfront Hall (Jan 17–Feb 15, 1998); Bexley Hall Place (Mar 28–May 31, 1998); Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham (closes Mar 13, 1999); catalogue.
- A Rake's Progress: From Hogarth to Hockney, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (Mar 26–Aug 31); catalogue.
- Sunshine and Noir: Art in L.A. 1960–1997, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (May 16–Sep 7); travels to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (Nov 15, 1997–Feb 1, 1998); Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'arte Contemporanea, Turin (May 15–Aug 23, 1998); Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles (Sep 16, 1998–Jan 1999); catalogue.
- 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Schwules Museum, Berlin (May 17–Aug 17).
- Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (Jun 1–Aug 17).
- Hockney to Hodgkin: British Master Prints 1960–1980, New Orleans Museum of Art (Jul 12–Aug); catalogue.
- Animals in Art (Blue Cross Centenary), Sotheby’s, London (Jul 28–Aug 28); travels to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery (Sep 6–Oct 19) and Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (Oct 27–Dec 6).
Honor
Honor
- Order of the Companions of Honour, Birthday Honours of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.