A parallel look at Hockney and Van Gogh's love of nature as expressed in their landscape paintings

We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life. DAVID HOCKNEY ***PRE-ORDER NOW*** Praise for David Hockney and Martin Gayford's previous book, A History of Pictures: 'I won't read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'A magic flight of a book... It's a measure of Hockney's vividness of perception that he can always put a cap on Gayford's knowledge ... fabulous' Clive James, Guardian Elegant and often surprising Hockney flags up a topic and Gayford gives the critical armature: it makes for a refreshing double act Michael Prodgers Books of the Year, Sunday Times 'An eloquent conversational testimony to the vividness of life lived through intelligent looking. You will see Caravaggio and Citizen Kane with fresh eyes' Daily Telegraph '[Hockney] asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artist seems to do ... enormously good-humoured and entertaining ... On almost every page, there is an interesting provocation' Andrew Marr, New Statesman On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms arts capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockneys new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.

This is an eye-opening catalogue that chronicles van Gogh's ongoing relationship with nature throughout his entire career. Among the featured works are van Gogh's drawings and paintings, along with related materials that illuminate his reading, sources, and influences.

“Sumptuously illustrated, this radiant volume encapsulates what it truly means to be a visual artist.” —Booklist David Hockney’s exuberant work is highly praised and widely celebrated—he is perhaps the world’s most popular living painter. But he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney’s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney’s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition’s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist’s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comédie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio. The conversations between Hockney and Gayford are punctuated by surprising and revealing observations on other artists—Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso among them—and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of Yorkshire, Hockney’s birthplace, and California.

At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his 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 his new iPad drawings and shows to full effect Hockney's singular skill in capturing the exuberance of nature.00Exhibition: Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (27.03-22.08.2021).

A classic, charting fifty years of the creative evolution of one of the most popular andbinfluential artists of modern times A stunning, lively volume charting almost fifty years of an extraordinary artist’s creativity across a range of media, Hockney’s Pictures is the definitive retrospective of one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century. The pieces are selected and organized thematically by David Hockney himself, tracking his lifelong experiments in ways of looking and depicting. Including more than 300 illustrations, accompanied by quotes from the artist that illuminate the passionate thinking behind the work, Hockney’s Pictures shows the evolution and diversity of Hockney’s paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, and photography, confirming and reinforcing his position as one of the world’s most popular living artists.