David Hockney Portraits, Sarah Howgate and Barbara Stern Shapiro, 2006

This wonderful volume was published to accompany an exhibit of David Hockney’s portraits at the National Gallery in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Los Angeles County Art Museum in 2006.  With six essays by art historians and critics (including one by the novelist and memoirist Edmund White) and with 61 figures and 163 plates from the exhibit, this is a comprehensive view of the portrait work of England’s greatest living artist.  Working from a deep study and understanding of art history (Rembrandt, Ingres, Matisse, and Picasso all make cameos) and with a wide variety of techniques including oil, watercolor, pencil, printmaking, drawing, and even Polaroid photographs, Hockney demonstrates the ‘hand, heart, and eye’ that he feels is central to portraits, capturing the inner person as reflected in the external appearance.  Ranging from the famous (Auden, Spender, Isherwood, Warhol, Ray, Kitaj, Lucien Freud) to his own personal friends and family, the best part of the book are the plates demonstrating his work.  In one of his projects that particularly appealed to me, Hockney photographed every one of the 112 visitors to his Los Angeles studio over the course of a year and then produced a seven page portrait in brightly colored pigment print collages.   While the essays make for some heavy sledding through art jargon, the plates are beautiful and worth an hour or two of browsing.  This book was particularly interesting because I had recently seen a 2016 documentary entitled Hockney (86% Rotten Tomato rating for an art documentary is pretty remarkable!) about his exhibit  ’82 Portraits and One Still Life’ that closed just last week at LACMA.  It is clear that at the age of 81, David Hockney continues to evolve and create beautiful, thought-provoking work.  See the documentary, read this book, and by all means, see any of Hockney’s work in person if you have the opportunity.