David Hockney's Ninety Million Dollar Painting

[+ WilliamM]

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David Hockney’s Ninety-Million-Dollar Painting: A Masterpiece Becomes a Trophy

By Andrea K. Scott The New Yorker

 

10:00 A.M.

 

 

Forty-six years ago, David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold at the Andre Emmerich gallery, in New York, for eighteen thousand dollars.

 

Photograph by Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty

 

David Hockney is the world’s most expensive living artist as of Thursday night, when “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” his big, color-soaked picture from 1972, sold at Christie’s New York for $90.3 million. It’s a dubious distinction, given that the eighty-one-year-old British painter won’t see a cent of the proceeds. In the U.S., artists aren’t entitled to royaltieswhen a piece changes hands; they profit only the first time their work sells. The Hockney record topples Jeff Koons, whose balloon dogs sold, also at Christie’s, for a measly $58.4 million, in 2013. The painter, never press-shy, has issued no comment on the astronomical payout. (The identity of the buyer, as ever at auction, remains unknown.) Last week, at an event in his honor in London, Hockney did share his thoughts on the pre-auction hoopla with Reuters, saying, “I ignore it.” Still, it’s bound to feel good—vindicating, even—for the L.A.-based painter, whose exuberant figuration was, until recently, considered the visual equivalent of easy-listening music by the art-world intelligentsia.

 

Even more gratifying than the interest of an anonymous billionaire, probably, were the half-million people who turned out to see the painting in Hockney’s retrospective at the Tate Britain last year. (The artist was a record-smasher there, too, bested only by Henri Matisse in the annals of the museum’s attendance.) But too often these days, when we talk about art, we talk about money. To cite just one example, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s name is now synonymous with the phrase “more than a hundred and ten million dollars.”

 

“Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” deserves the overused label “masterpiece,” but it’s not a better picture today than it was forty-six years ago, when it sold at the Andre Emmerich gallery, in New York, for eighteen thousand dollars. Trophies and masterpieces aren’t the same thing, as anyone who has seen Leonardo da Vinci’s half-billion-dollar “Salvator Mundi” can attest. Reminiscing recently about his attraction to the subject of pools—he painted about twelve, then moved on—Hockney said, “You can look at the surface of the water or you could look through it.” The market is a shallows, reflecting art as an unregulated and increasingly obscenely priced financial instrument; the real value of a great painting has an unquantifiable depth. I just hope that Hockney’s beautiful picture is bound for a wall and not a crate in a freeport.

[+ Avalon]

In the U.S., artists aren’t entitled to royaltieswhen a piece changes hands; they profit only the first time their work sells.

 

That's too bad. I wonder if there has ever been an attempt to change the law?

 

I wonder who the models are?

[marylander1940]

That's too bad. I wonder if there has ever been an attempt to change the law?

 

 

 

Why changing the law?

 

Would like to change it also for houses and everything else. Once you sale X for X what would make you entitled to more money if the price changes 40 years later? Where does it end?

 

I understand royalties and I'm glad the folks from "Married with children are getting paid every time their show is on.

 

I wonder who the models are?

 

They are either old or dead.

[+ Avalon]

Why changing the law?

 

Would like to change it also for houses and everything else. Once you sale X for X what would make you entitled to more money if the price changes 40 years later? Where does it end?

 

.

 

Just for art. I don't believe in government financing of the arts. But I think this might encourage artists. The old joke goes an artist can't be famous until after they're dead.and stories about starving artists.

[+ WilliamM]

 

Hockey and hi favorite model, Peter Schlesinger.

Edited November 17, 2018 by WilliamM

[marylander1940]

Just for art. I don't believe in government financing of the arts. But I think this might encourage artists. The old joke goes an artist can't be famous until after they're dead.and stories about starving artists.

 

You'd be creating a tax on the owners of that painting that had vision to buy it before the artist got famous.

 

new regulation..

Edited November 18, 2018 by marylander1940

[+ Avalon]

You'd be creating a tax on the owners of that painting that had vision to buy it before the artist got famous.

 

You sound like a liberal with this new regulation...

 

Just sharing the profits from each new sale; maybe 10%; no taxes involved.

 

A person buys a painting for $100,000. $90,000 goes to the seller and $10,000 to the artist.

[+ Avalon]

I'm not really familiar with him.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schlesinger

 

Peter was the clothed model in the painting

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_an_Artist_(Pool_with_Two_Figures)

[+ WilliamM]

I'm not really familiar with him.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schlesinger

 

Peter was the clothed model in the painting

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_an_Artist_(Pool_with_Two_Figures)

 

My guess: Hockney has has been discussed often on The CBS Sunday Morning Show.

[JohnGerman]

I like David Hockney's work. Not necessarily too deep, but bright, cheery, and has charisma. I am fine with him being the most expensive living artist. I certainly prefer him over the cheesy ex-stock broker. That being said, if it's up to me, I'd say Gerhard Richter is the best living painter in the world today.

[amused1]

I guess I'm an artistic Philistine as I've never understood his appeal.

[+ sync]

I guess I'm an artistic Philistine as I've never understood his appeal.

 

Me too. If I had $90.3 million to purchase that painting, I would still have my $90.3 million.

[Rudynate]

I like David Hockney's work. Not necessarily too deep, but bright, cheery, and has charisma. I am fine with him being the most expensive living artist. I certainly prefer him over the cheesy ex-stock broker. That being said, if it's up to me, I'd say Gerhard Richter is the best living painter in the world today.

 

 

The bright cheeriness isn't all. There is a lot of irony in the bright cheeriness. Yes, much of his work depicts sort of sunny, languid Southern California afternoons. But they scream with existential despair.

[JohnGerman]

The bright cheeriness isn't all. There is a lot of irony in the bright cheeriness. Yes, much of his work depicts sort of sunny, languid Southern California afternoons. But they scream with existential despair.

 

I know what you mean, just as the cheesiness of Jeff Koons is really not a real cheesiness. That being said, was there really that much despair for Hockney when he was trying to convey a sense of despair? And as he gets older, his later works don't even have any pretension of those pseudo despair anymore. It kinda got me to think of a current pop singer, Sam Smith. When I first heard his song on radio when I was driving, I thought it was a middle aged African American soul singer, but when I saw the effeminate British kid in pictures, I just felt completely betrayed.

 

Don't get me wrong. I like David Hockney, but I like his prettiness and shallowness, and not the purported despair.

[+ WilliamM]

[+ WilliamM]

[JohnGerman]

Heck, in the sleeping picture above, I would have absolutely zero despair staring at my guy's cute ass which I know I can have all to myself at any time! :p

[bigvalboy]

My favorite...For obvious reasons

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 19, 2018 by bigvalboy

[Stormy]

I'm really missing something important. Nice, interesting painting but a masterpiece? Glad I have something to say about it even though not that useful. The forum has gone silent since the Politics forum was disabled

[+ WilliamM]

I'm really missing something important. Nice, interesting painting but a masterpiece? Glad I have something to say about it even though not that useful. The forum has gone silent since the Politics forum was disabled

The first Hockney painting I saw is the one with the cat (above). It drew me in right away. Perhaps it helps to actually see the painting, and not a photo.

[body2body]

I have loved David Hockney’s work for years, like Matisse, and Frank Stella, his work is often dismissed as being “decorative” as if it were somehow a sin for paintings to be pretty, colorful, easy to look at. He has been an innovator too working with Polaroid photos and Video. Like Picasso, and Matisse, his designs for the stage have also been important. I have had the pleasure of seeing productions of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”,and Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” Hockney’s sets, costumes, and lighting added to both productions.

[+ nycman]

I saw it before the auction......

 

All I can say is it photographs well.

 

In person....it was “meh”.

[Karl-G]

The painting was painted in Hockney's studio in London, using photographs of the location. The scene is not of California, but of the south of France. Hockney and his young lover, Peter Schlesinger, were several times guests of Tony Richardson at his villa in the South of France. They both loved the area. They had just broken up, and the painting is kind of Hockney's farewell to Peter (who today is a well known photographer and artist whose husband is a Swedish photographer). The standing clothed figure "is" Peter, although it is derived from a photo of Peter taken in London a year earlier. Hockney's studio assistant (who is still living) stood in the place of Peter, so Hockney could get the body position right. The figure in the pool was a friend of the assistant. Hockney completed the painting in a rush in a couple of weeks so he could include it in a show he was having in New York.

[Courage]

My favorite Hockney piece has always been a photographic collage, The Scrabble Game (1983).

 

I don't agree with the criticisms of shallow or cheery--both because I don't see his work that way and because I don't see those qualities as automatic negatives. To each his own!

[thickornotatall]

I'm probably in the minority..

90 Million? Bullshit!...over priced...inflated market...good publicist years ago..

Must have blown someone...