‘A burst of springtime joy’ Daily Telegraph

‘A springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light’ The Times

‘Lavishly illustrated’ Guardian

David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy

On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility 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 art’s 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 Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.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.

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The decades that followed, up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, were a complex, vibrant period of artistic questioning, searching, risk-taking and innovation. Concentrating on this period of great upheaval, this book will explore the constructive dialogue between painting and sculpture, and the influential roles played by three giants of the era, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, across European art as a whole. While acknowledging the centrality of Paris as a cultural capital, it will also uniquely highlight other centres of artistic ferment in Europe, from Brussels and Barcelona to Berlin and Vienna, and track the variety of routes into modernism in the early twentieth century.

This fully illustrated catalogue will contain four essays, introductions to each city of ferment and biographies of the artists.

Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:
The National Gallery, London 25 March–13 August 2023

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