David Hockney is a British-born artist who, in the 1960s, made California a second home from where he created iconic and influential paintings. The 81-year-old is one of the most prized living artists; in 2018 one of his paintings sold at auction for $90 million. And he’s been one of the most innovative artists, making major contributions to the pop art movement.
In 1982, he went into Yosemite National Park with a Pentax camera, took multiple pictures of the same landscapes, and arranged the photos into a puzzle-like collage. They came out like a Cubist take on nature, capturing a sense of the vastness and aliveness of the place.
“When the iPad came out in 2010, Hockney had one of the first,” writes Monterey Museum of Art’s executive director Stuart Chase. “He realized that it was a new medium. He made two trips to Yosemite [to] draw the sites, landscape, and monuments on the iPad.”
Hockney’s fusions of plein air nature painting with the latest technology resulted in The Yosemite Suite, which was exhibited around the world on iPads, monitors and in large colorful prints. MMA is showing limited edition prints of that work in a show titled David Hockney’s Yosemite. And although Hockney is British by birth, Chase says the show conforms to the museum’s mission of highlighting the region.
“The topic of Yosemite explored through technology addresses quintessentially California issues of nature and innovation.”
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