“Do remember they can’t cancel the spring”. This statement, sent by David Hockney to his friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, encapsulates his enduring message. Despite the numerous challenges he has faced throughout his life, Hockney’s work consistently celebrates the vitality of life. His diverse artistic output stands in stark contrast to the prevailing trend of conceptual, theory-driven art seen in recent decades. Instead, his creations tell a story of spring, embodying vibrancy and a personal narrative that has woven itself into the history of art.
The David Hockney 25 exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris presents the first comprehensive retrospective of the British artist’s work, featuring over 400 pieces. Even before its opening, it was expected to be one of the most significant art events of the year globally. While the curators concentrated on the last 25 years of Hockney’s creative journey, visitors can also admire iconic works such as A Bigger Splash (1967) and Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970-71). The exhibition showcases a variety of formats, including portraits, landscapes, video installations, and works created on iPads. Magdalena Gemra, one of the curators of the exhibition, shared insights into the concept behind this magnificent show.
Julia Gorlewska: Let’s start from the beginning. “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring” is the quote that opens the exhibition and echoes throughout all eleven galleries. What significance does it carry within the context of this show? What does it reveal about the artist himself, and how does it reflect his creative philosophy?
Magdalena Gemra: Originally, that was a sentence that Hockney was emailing to his friends during the pandemic days back in 2020, and it accompanied an iPad painting of daffodils. It hasn’t lost any relevance today; it is a message of a radicality of joy coming from an artist who experienced loss at many points in his life. We installed it in pink neon, in the artist’s own handwriting, on the façade of the Fondation – so that the first encounter with the exhibition is already charged with intimacy and immediacy. It collapses the distance between artist and audience. For us, that was key: we wanted the quote not just to introduce the show, but to act as a kind of refrain, recurring subtly across the eleven galleries.
Within the curatorial framework of this exhibition, it operates on several levels: as an emotional overture, a conceptual through line, and an articulation of Hockney’s worldview. It becomes especially resonant in the vast gallery devoted to Hockney’s decade-long return to Yorkshire. There, his engagement with seasonal change becomes a metaphor for both artistic renewal and personal resilience. The same sensibility appears in more recent Normandy works, where, late in life, he turns again to digital tools not as a gimmick but as a new brush for an old task: paying attention to the world, moment by moment.
The quote anchors then a core tension in the exhibition: between permanence and impermanence, between nature’s cycles and the constancy of creative vision. It reaffirms his commitment to seeing it as a form of resistance, but also pure visual delight.
“The quote, «Do remember they can’t cancel the spring» anchors then a core tension in the exhibition: between permanence and impermanence, between nature’s cycles and the constancy of creative vision.”
— Magdalen Gemra
J.G.: The exhibition is a comprehensive collection of Hockney’s work. It spans 11 large galleries and includes over 400 pieces, featuring iconic works. The show is exceptionally diverse in terms of media, ranging from oil and acrylic paintings to ink, pencil, and charcoal drawings, digital art created on iPhones and iPads, photography, and video installations. One might think that a single decade of Hockney’s work would be enough to fill an entire exhibition. What was the biggest challenge in creating such a broad overview?
M.G.: The biggest challenge was capturing the full scope of Hockney’s visual thinking – his relentless curiosity and the extraordinary breadth of his practice – without reducing it to a linear or overly didactic narrative.
One of the core ideas we wanted to convey is his deep belief that all art is shaped by technology, whether that’s the optical tools of the Renaissance, the camera, or digital tablets. What’s remarkable is how he doesn’t treat technology as a novelty, but as a means of expanding the act of looking. This constant exploration – across oil painting, drawing, photography, iPhones, iPads, and immersive video – demanded an exhibition structure that could reflect that dynamism.
The task was to establish a rhythm that would allow the viewer to see not just the shifts in medium or subject, but how each shift opens a new way of seeing. Whether it’s the exuberance of his large oil landscapes, the precision of his portrait drawings, or the atmospheric depth of the Moon Room, each room had to hold its own while still participating in a larger dialogue. And crucially, Hockney is still working every day, still exhibiting an incredible vitality in his studio practice. So the exhibition had to feel alive – to reflect not only what he’s done, but what he’s still discovering.
The biggest surprise for me was seeing the show come together in the complex postmodernist architecture of Frank Gehry, and how the building added yet another dimension to the whole, how Hockney manages to keep up with it and be in real dialogue. But that is the pleasure of working with great artists; there are always elements that surpass expectations.
J.G.: And David Hockney was personally involved in every aspect of the exhibition. Alongside his partner and studio director, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, he chose to focus particularly on the last 25 years of his work while also including his most iconic earlier pieces. This makes it the first exhibition to span the full seven decades of his career. What was this collaboration like in designing the exhibition?
M.G.: The idea behind focusing on the first quarter of the century was largely motivated by Hockney’s wish to show previously unseen works. He wanted it to feel current. Since the last vast travelling retrospective in 2017, there has been an explosion of creativity in Hockney’s work, which had yet to be shown to a wider audience, including the very fruitful Normandy period.
The artist was very involved in the exhibition and catalogue, together with his studio in London and offices in Los Angeles. He had a model of all four levels of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in his studio, so he was able to oversee it at all times.
The guest curator, Sir Norman Rosenthal, worked closely with the artist and his team – especially Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, absolutely crucial was the involvement of Jonathan Wilkinson – and with our curatorial team at the Fondation: Suzanne Pagé, Head curator of the exhibition, François Michaud, curator, and myself.
J.G.: Speaking of the Normandy period. After years of exploring art history, portraiture, and the nature of landscape, Hockney returned to the landscape genre. A key part of the exhibition emphasises the last 25 years of his work, primarily created in Yorkshire, London, and Normandy. This period begins with a celebration of the Yorkshire landscape, including May Blossom on the Roman Road (2009), which captures a hawthorn bush bursting into spring bloom. Day by day, season by season, Hockney documents nature’s shifts in light and mood. Do you think the essence of Hockney’s work lies in capturing what we need most: what is truly essential in life?
M.G.: Hockney’s work captures not just beauty or joy, but attention, continuity, and a reverence for what endures. I would say that nowhere is that more evident than in the landscapes of Yorkshire. After decades of exploring portraiture, art history, and visual perception, Hockney’s return to the English countryside marks a kind of personal and artistic re-centring. Having spent years in California, in 2002, he found himself seeing the spring arrive while he crossed Holland Park daily to go pose for Lucian Freud. Hockney was drawn back to the cyclical rhythms of the European landscape, compelled by the recurrence of seasons and the visible transformations of light, weather, and form. So when in 2004 he decided to establish a more permanent studio in Bridlington, it was not just a return to nature, but a return to something enduring and essential.
There’s also something deeply affective at the origin of this period: the death of his close friend Jonathan Silver, who had long encouraged Hockney to reconnect with his roots. That loss shaped a body of work that is, in many ways, about presence – about noticing what remains, and what returns. Whether he’s working from memory in the studio or painting en plein air, his practice in this period is hybrid, intimate, and attentive. As Anne Lyles eloquently points out in her catalogue essay, these works are also in conversation with the English landscape tradition, particularly Constable and Turner. But Hockney’s aim isn’t to historicise; it’s to refresh the act of looking. Paintings like May Blossom on the Roman Road (2009) do exactly that. They remind us that to really see a blooming hawthorn or the shifting hues of a hedgerow is to witness something vital, something sustaining.
“Hockney’s work captures not just beauty or joy, but attention, continuity, and a reverence for what endures.”
— Magdalen Gemra
J.G.: Let’s discuss the portraits, which, along with the landscapes, constitute the majority of the exhibition. What significance do these portraits hold in Hockney’s art? How do you view this as curators of a transversal exhibition?
M.G.: Hockney is a figurative artist and so has a natural penchant towards genres of landscapes and portraiture; he’s revisited them over the years, and in particular, the double portraits occupy an important place in his work. The portraits in this exhibition are not merely likenesses; they are profound explorations of human presence and connection. Hockney has consistently used portraiture to delve into the essence of his sitters, capturing not just their appearances but their personalities and relationships.
The portraits are integral to a transversal exhibition because they bridge Hockney’s diverse artistic explorations. They provide a human context to his landscapes and other works, grounding his broader themes in personal interaction and observation. The consistent format of the portraits – each painted on the same size canvas, each sitter given the same time or two to three days and free to choose what they wear and how they pose – creates a cohesive narrative thread throughout the exhibition, highlighting Hockney’s commitment to capturing the nuances of human expression and connection.
J.G.: And what about the exhibition’s climax? In the final gallery on the top floor, visitors are greeted by an explosion of colour, accompanied by a sense of nostalgia. A new self-portrait by Hockney: playful yet delicate and sentimental, hangs beside two new paintings inspired by visionary artists Munch and Blake, which convey the message: “Less is known than people think”. Alongside the majestic painting of the Nordic sun, these works feel like meditations on what lies ahead. Was that the intended message? Despite the exhibition’s joy and vitality, the final room leaves us with a note of melancholy and reflection on the passing of time.
M.G.: Yes, that quiet undercurrent of reflection – of time slipping, of looking forward while glancing back – was very much intentional. The final modest-sized gallery brings the exhibition full circle, but it does so gently. After the exuberance and visual generosity of the preceding rooms, the space on the top floor feels stripped back and distilled. What remains is the essence.
At its centre is the latest self-portrait, Play within a Play within a Play and me with a cigarette – at once playful and poignant. It deliberately echoes Play Within a Play (1962), encountered in the very first room. That visual rhyme is not accidental: Hockney is staging himself in a theatrical setting, but now older, reflective, self-aware. It’s a mirror held up across time, inviting the viewer to consider the arc of a life lived through art.
The adjacent works – two luminous acrylic paintings informed by Blake and Munch – point to a new direction. As Hockney himself has said, these paintings feel “more spiritual”. They reintroduce handwritten phrases into the composition, a gesture he hasn’t employed for decades. “Less is known than people think” isn’t just a statement – it’s an epiphany, a quiet letting-go of certainty. The majestic but little-known watercolour, Nordic Sun, which radiates across the other wall, offers no closure, only atmosphere: glowing, suspended, eternal. It’s not melancholia in the traditional sense – it’s more of a meditation on transience, filtered through colour, memory, and light. While the exhibition as a whole is saturated with vitality and curiosity, the final room acknowledges that time moves on. Hockney doesn’t deny it – he stages it with humility, humour, and a new kind of openness. It’s less a conclusion than a threshold.
“What makes his work feel personal, even when he’s not visibly in it, is that constant sense of presence.”
— Magdalen Gemra
J.G.: It is suggested that every painting can be regarded as a self-portrait in some way. So what does David Hockney’s “self” represent in his paintings? How does it manifest itself?
M.G.: It’s in the way he looks at everything. You feel it in the precision of a line, in how he watches light fall on a leaf – to mirror his own appreciative remark on Monet – or in the intimacy he creates with his sitters. His “self” is perceptual: curious, joyful, analytical. Even his landscapes are portraits, in a way, of time spent, of memory, of deep looking. What makes his work feel personal, even when he’s not visibly in it, is that constant sense of presence. He’s always there, behind the brush or the screen, asking us to look closely and see more clearly.
David Hockney 25
April 9 – September 1, 2025
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
