In the spring of 2020, the then 83-year-old British artist David Hockney was quarantined in a studio in the Normandy countryside, France, where his dog Ruby and his two long-time assistants, JP and Jonathan, were isolated.
David Hockney in the Normandy countryside
The more isolated, the more it inspires a love of nature and life, and in the Normandy countryside, David Hockney is devoted to the depiction of nature. Every day he went from his residence to his studio, making a big circle to see how the buds of apple trees and pear trees bloomed in the spring sun, as well as the young shoots of willow trees by the pond, the dead branches in the water, the floating leaves of water lilies... He painted from early spring, mid-spring, all the way to late spring, the normandy countryside, in david hockney's pen, oh no, recorded in his iPad.
An artist who loves innovation, Old Man Hockney has created the most recognizable image in half a century, and his masterpiece "Portrait of an Artist (Pool and Two Portraits)" was auctioned for 626 million yuan in 2018, becoming the "most expensive living artist". Hockney has a wide range of areas, he has engaged in stage art, collage photography, but also studied how to use fax machines and optical instruments for creation, he is very interested in the study of painting media, he tried to use printing, cameras, printers, cameras, iPhones and other media to paint. In 2010, just four months after the iPad was born, Hockney began to use the drawing software on the iPad to create.
"Portrait of the Artist (Pool and Two Portraits)" auction site
Hockney said that the iPad can play games, can use social software, can browse the web, and happiest, can draw, draw bigger pictures.
In the spring of 2020, although the whole world is shrouded in the shadow of the epidemic, Hockney is also locked in the Normandy countryside, but he has an iPad, a beautiful countryside, and trees that continue to sprout new shoots in the spring, how can the world be lonely? Hockney recorded the arrival of spring with his iPad, and he used these paintings to say to the world: "The virus will not cancel this spring!"
In 2021, at the Royal College of Art in London, under the title "The Coming of Spring in Normandy", Hockney exhibited 116 of his paintings with his iPad.
What the iPad meant to Hockney was the equivalent of a portable sketchbook, but that was just the beginning. He can walk around with his iPad, always ready to record the scenery, and he can complete a work in 5 minutes, which was not possible for previous artists.
Hockney can use a drawing program to complete a variety of textures and traces, he can draw with all his fingers, he can also zoom in on the screen, for detail, which is why his iPad works can be printed into large-scale prints without feeling hollow.
David Hockney
More than 100 years ago, Barbizon and Impressionist painters captured nature and light and shadow through sketching in the French suburbs, and today, Hockney uses modern technology to try to capture the changes of spring with different colors and brushstrokes.
"About painting in spring, it's a philosophical exploration of looking at something holistically and depicting it with an intimacy that a camera can't give," he says. "It feels like Van Gogh, understanding that nature is a great mystery to us, a mystery that teaches us to be spiritually aware and to seek strength from it."
Hockney used his iPad to give landscape painting a new lease of life. Every generation sees landscapes differently, and in an era when painting has become anachronistic and even declared "dead", Hockney has opened up new possibilities for painting and conveyed the power of nature to ease our nervousness under the shadow of the epidemic.