Friday, October 21, 2011

My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

David Hockney

My hero:

David Hockney by Susan Hill

'He is ever-young, ever-reinventing himself as an artist, roaming about here or there and stopping to set it down, ever alert and singing with life and genius'


Susan Hill
Friday 21 October 2011

B

eing from Scarborough, I admire anyone who admits to hailing from Bridlington, Scarborians thinking nowt o' Brid. But for the world's greatest painter by a country mile to live there, after having enjoyed the vividness of California is a matter for wonder.

Look at a Hockney, look at your world. It has changed: the trees his Yorkshire trees, the sky his Californian sky, cloudscape a Bridlington one, the tulips, elderly mothers, Grimms' fairytale characters – all his.

In my 20s and broke, I was offered a Hockney, of tulips, for 200 quid, riches beyond the dreams of avarice then. I regret that picture almost daily. I still dream about it. Go to Saltaire, near Leeds, to see Hockney: for his theatre and opera designs – no one else has ever got The Magic Flute so right – for pencil drawings of intricate beauty and exactness, photographs based on paintings and paintings based on photographs, for stuff from his youthful heyday in the 60s, stuff from his mad middle years when all he seemed to care about were azure swimming pools and hot sun on bodies, and later, photographic triptychs and astonishing trees, the same trees in different seasons, and the exactly right muddy Yorkshire landscape.
I have a small book of Hockney's illustrations for Grimms' Fairy Tales, spikey, sinister little drawings of Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel, of sticks and straw and long hair and magic mountains. No colour here, everything stark, everything in meticulous black line and half tone. The whole world-picture of the fairytales is gathered together.

Hockney is happy-making, energising. He is ever-young, ever-reinventing himself as an artist, roaming about here or there and stopping to set it down, ever alert and singing with life and genius. I can't draw an egg but he makes me think I could. The only quarrel I have with Hockney is not that he comes from Brid but that he likes dachshunds. It's a small price to pay.

THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)

(PAGE 8)

2013

(PAGE 5)
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)

(PAGE 4)



(PAGE 3)

2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016



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