David Hockney

An uplifting celebration of spring and the power of art against lockdown: Hockney's new iPad drawings, in an intimate sketchbook format.

At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his new house, studio and garden in Normandy. From there, he witnessed the arrival of spring, and recorded the blossoming of the surrounding landscape on his iPad, a method of drawing he has been using for over a decade. Drawing outdoors was an antidote to the anxiety of the moment for Hockney 'We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress,' he says. This uplifting publication produced to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts includes 116 of the new iPad drawings and shows to full effect Hockney's singular skill in capturing the exuberance of nature. The book begins with an interview with the show's curator, Edith Devaney, in which Hockney discusses his heralding of the spring.

About the Authors

Edith Devaney Edith Devaney is head of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and curator of contemporary projects at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Hockney himself is present in every aspect of the publication. He collaborated closely through all production stages and conceived of this book as a purely visual survey of more than 450 works prefaced by a handwritten programmatic statement.

As an artist who rarely looks back, the vast volume is as much his own personal review as it is a definitive record for art lovers all over the world. “I don’t tend to live in the past,” he comments, “Working on this book, I see quite how much I have done.”

William Boyd is the author of one work of non-fiction, three collections of short stories and thirteen novels, including the bestselling historical spy thriller Restless winner of the Costa Novel of the Year and Any Human Heart, in which the character of Ian Fleming features.

Among his other awards are the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Jean Monnet. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Born in Ghana in 1952, William Boyd spent much of his early life in West Africa. He now divides his time between the south-west of France and Chelsea, where he lives a stone’s throw from James Bond’s London address.