美国国家公共电台 NPR What's It Like To Pose For David Hockney? We Asked The People In His Portraits

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

At the age of 80, the artist David Hockney has put on a show in Los Angeles called "82 Portraits And 1 Still-life," which got NPR's Susan Stamberg thinking about the people who posed for him.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE¹: The youngest is Rufus Hale, 11 when Hockney painted him in 2015. His mother was making a film of the artist and took Rufus along. Rufus sat in a corner of Hockney's studio, sketching³. Why don't I paint you, Hockney asked.

RUFUS HALE: Right then and there, he just started.

STAMBERG: Rufus was wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, nice pants, good shoes and a red tie that day.

RUFUS: Yeah, I often wear suits and fancy clothes.

STAMBERG: Do you have to do it for school?

RUFUS: No, I don't. It's not a school thing. I just like to. It's the sort of thing I like to do.

STAMBERG: He sat in his fancy for three hours and was fidgeting. Hockney didn't mind - got a pretty good likeness⁴, Rufus says, except for one thing. The kid's eyes are brown, but...

RUFUS: He gave me blue eyes for some reason. Aside from that, it was basically identical to me. It's weird⁵ (laughter).

STAMBERG: I think blue-eyed David Hockney saw himself in the boy, a young, blond Brit sitting there with his sketchbook, just as young David would have done. Young, not so young - many ages populate these 3-foot-high squarish canvases. Curator Stephanie Barron says all kinds of sitters posed.

STEPHANIE BARRON: It's a snapshot of David's life. You can have an eminent⁶ museum director or an architect or an actor next to the fellow who comes to wash his cars or some of the women who help run his household. There's a democracy.

STAMBERG: They all sit in the same yellow armchair against the same blue or green background - Hockney's choice - on the same blue or green floor. On that floor, first, an assistant draws lines around their feet so they can reposition properly after breaks. Then Hockney charcoals⁷ a rough sketch² on the blank canvas.

BARRON: There is nothing except the canvas, the artist, his gaze and you. That's it. The rest of the world just fades away.

STAMBERG: And he begins.

DAGNY CORCORAN: He stands very erect⁸.

STAMBERG: Dagny Corcoran - friend and art bookseller.

CORCORAN: He puts one hand behind his back like this, holds his arm out with a long brush, and it's like, whoa, that's amazing. That's what painters look like.

STAMBERG: And they look and look, paint, look for three hours, then a break for lunch - excellent food, Rufus says - and then they work another few hours in the afternoon. By the end of day one, it's becoming a portrait.

DOUGLAS ROBERTS: David has an uncanny way of capturing someone quite quickly.

STAMBERG: Longtime friend Douglas Roberts, an art dealer⁹, says Hockney starts with the head, then the body, goes back to the head and hands on day two, and finishes up on day three.

ROBERTS: It's completely silent in the studio. He works absolutely quietly. And, you know, he's a bit deaf, you know, David. He's got hearing aids to assist. There was always music in the studio - opera playing or something - but now, not at all.

STAMBERG: Silence, scrutiny¹⁰, sitting. Curator Stephanie Barron thought she would go to work every day after she posed.

BARRON: What I found instead is that I was so exhausted¹¹ from the intensity¹² of the scrutiny, I went home and took a nap.

STAMBERG: But David Hockney kept going. In a way, he had to.

ROBERTS: He had had a minor¹³ stroke, which sort of slapped him in the face a bit, I think. And the best therapy was to begin painting right away.

STAMBERG: And he decided¹⁴ to paint friends - easy to gather and to be with.

ROBERTS: He just needed the company to sort of get through.

STAMBERG: At LACMA, where the portraits are hung in chronological¹⁵ order, Douglas Roberts can see his octogenarian friend's health improving from canvas to canvas.

ROBERTS: He says when he stands at the easel and paints, he feels 30 years old.

STAMBERG: That renewed health, the vigor¹⁶ resulted in 82 vivid, colorful portraits. Then there's the one still life. Instead of a person, there's a bright blue wooden bench with bananas, red pepper, lemons, oranges. Seems the friend scheduled to sit that day had to cancel. Her father was very ill. But the paints were all set up, so Hockney painted the veggies and fruit instead.

What strikes me is how wonderful, when the sitter doesn't show for sad reasons, the joy he makes.

BARRON: I think that's one of David's gifts.

STAMBERG: One of so many gifts on view through the end of July at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Seeing it is like going to a lively party - David Hockney and his friends. I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News, Los Angeles.