David Hockney

The exhibition David Hockney, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is the largest ever solo exhibition in Asia devoted to the British artist David Hockney (b. 1937 in Bradford, UK) who is regarded as one of the most innovative artists of the postwar era. Hockney first came into the limelight with the era-defining works that he presented while studying at the Royal College of Art in London. Since the 1960s, he has produced numerous works that transcend the conventional framework of expression in a diverse variety of mediums and fields such as painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and stage design, and today continues to devote himself to his artistic practice in Normandy, France, where he is currently based.

Featuring some 120 works including a number of his significant works produced in California and London such as A Lawn Sprinkler (1967) and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970–71), in addition to a series of recent large-scale landscapes The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) and A Year in Normandie (2020-21), the exhibition serves as an opportunity to fully experience the world of Hockney’s oeuvre.

Hockney’s extensive career spanning over 60 years is underpinned by his exploration of “how to see” and “how to depict” the world in front of his eyes. The means he chose to work with in order to approach this fundamental question was the “picture.” With his remarkable skill to render his keen observation and insight, Hockney, particularly since the 1980s, had opened up new horizons, creating lively pictorial spaces that more accurately reflected the human experience of “seeing” through seeking out perspectives that differed from traditional discourses of perception in Western art. Hockney has remained attentive to the quotidian in the recent era of unprecedented challenges, and continued to capture it with joy and expectation. His works indeed serve as a great source of encouragement and inspiration to all those living today.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo houses 150 works by Hockney in its collection, and shortly after its opening, presented the exhibition David Hockney: Prints 1954 - 1995 in 1996. This long-awaited solo exhibition is conceived as a result of this ongoing relationship between the artist and the museum, and is realized in full collaboration with the artist.

Co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Curated by Ai Kusumoto, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The exhibition catalogue David Hockney is available for purchase at the exhibition store and NADiff Online Store.

Watch the special message from the artist on MOT’s YouTube.

*No unauthorized copying and replication of the images on this page.