ABSTRACT
In the popular press and public imagination-as well as in the more rarefied realms of art world journals-few twentieth-century artists have garnered as much long-lasting and positive attention as Los Angeles-based British painter David Hockney. His distinctive style and uninhibited use of color have embellished an enormous range of medias-from painting and drawing, to etchings, photographic collages, printing, and stage design. Hockney’s paintings-from A Big Splash (1967) to Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio (1980)—have made the freeways, swimming pools, and gardens of Los Angeles, since the mid-1970s his adopted home, into icons of the modern imagination, while his stage designs and paintings have graced major opera houses and museums around the globe.
