DAVID HOCKNEY

RETROSPECTIVE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DAVID HOCKNEY RETROSPECTIVE TO OPEN AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JUNE 18

Exhibition dates: June 18 - August 14, 1988 Exhibition location: Special Exhibition galleries second floor Press preview: Wednesday, June 1, 1988

David Hockney: A Retrospective, a major international loan exhibition of the work of the contemporary artist David Hockney, will be shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 18 through August 14, 1988. This exhibition is the first large- scale attempt to assess the work of one of the most gifted, inventive, and popular artists at work . The exhibition contains 150 , 60 , 3 0 photographs, several suites of prints, and samples of his collaborative work in stage design. Works in the exhibition come from public and private collections in the United States, Japan, South America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

AT&T is the sole corporate sponsor of the exhibition in all three venues of the international tour and has made possible the publication of the exhibition catalogue. (more)

THIS EXHIBITION IS SPONSORED BY AT&T

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Organized by the County Museum of Art, the exhibition was on view there from February 4 through April 24, 1988. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Following its presentation at The Metropolitan Museum, it will be shown at the Gallery in London from October 26, 1988, through January 3, 1989.

David Hockney's work since the early 1960s has commanded attention from a wide audience, and his explorations into new territories and media continue to challenge conventional notions about art. The exhibition contains examples of Hockney's early paintings and drawings done in England in the 1950s and 1960s, sketches and photographs from his extensive travels abroad, three decades of portraiture, still life compositions, and work for the theater.

David Hockney was born in , England in 1937. From 1953 to 1957 he studied at the Bradford School of Art and from 1959 to 1962 at the , London. While he was a student, Hockney became well aware of the gestural heritage of

Abstract and the newer, narrative imagery of .

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In 1961 and 1963, respectively, Hockney first visited New York and Hollywood. In the late 1960s he became an intermittent resident of Los Angeles, and in the early 1970s he lived in Paris. Since 1979 he has permanently resided in Los Angeles. His travels have been frequent and sometimes extensive, in the United States and Mexico, as well as Egypt, Japan, and China.

As an artist Hockney works with control and deep respect for the materials of the artist's craft. He has felt completely free, however, to explore and perfect innovative techniques, particulary in and printraaking. A continuing dialogue with art history is characteristic of his art, and its specific references range from Egyptian paintings on walls to Chinese paintings on scrolls, from Baroque etchings to 19th- century book illustrations. The artist from the past whom he frequently cites is Picasso.

In recent years Hockney has worked in the theater, with the camera, and with commercial printing and office copying machines, while continuing to produce canvases and print works.

The installation of the exhibition is loosely arranged according to certain themes, formal and conceptual issues that Hockney has repeatedly addressed: the tensions between flatness (more) -4- and depth, between in- and out-of doors, between exactitude and artifice, and between motion and stillness. He has also been fascinated by the elusive nature of surfaces, water in particular. Such thematic examination of Hockney's career suggests its most remarkable aspect: his ceaseless curiosity about the interplays between theory and observation and between observation and practice.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 3 00- page catalogue, underwritten by AT&T and co-published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Harry N. Abrams in the United States and Canada, and with Thames & Hudson in the and the British Commonwealth. It includes seven essays by R. B. Kitaj, , Christopher Knight, Gert Schiff, Anne Hoy, Kenneth E. Silver, and Lawrence Weschler. In addition, Hockney has contributed 24 original prints which have been published as part of the catalogue.

David Hockney: A Retrospective — the exhibition and publication — is the result of the efforts of Maurice Tuchman, Senior Curator of 20th-century Art, and Stephanie Barron, Curator of 2 0th-century Art, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition has been coordinated in New York by Kay Bearman,

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Administrator for the Department for 2 0th Century Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with William S. Liberman, Chairman of the Department of 20th Century Art. Installation design at the Metropolitan is by Jeffrey L. Daly, the Museum's Chief Designer, lighting design by Steven Hefferan, Museum Lighting Designer.

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION please contact John Ross or Berenice Heller, Public Information Department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tel. (212) 879-5500/or Caroline Herbert, Rogers & Cowan, Inc.. (202) 466-2925. May 1988