David Hockney

By Simon Mckeown. Professor of Art, School of Arts & Creative Industries, Teesside University, Teesside University Born in Bradford and shaped by northern art-school discipline, David Hockney brought a working-class, almost punk refusal to British art: do the work, trust the eye, do not ask for approval. Hockney made success look effortless: all color, good humor, great glasses, cigarettes and smoky charm. But for a young gay artist from a northern mill town, nothing about that journey was effortless.

'Those cigarettes were no match for Hockney's joy for living, looking and creating. He loved L.A. and we loved him back,' writes an L.A. Times reader.

Multiple galleries at the fair have brought works by the late British artist whose market was “booming when we lost him”

This week, we honor a painter who made the everyday otherworldly, a poet-photographer, and a champion of Black artists.

Your morning catch up: What David Hockney meant, the B-52 crash and more big stories.

As the art world mourns the loss of Britain’s much-loved artist David Hockney, local painters have paid tribute to his influence. David Hockney died last week aged 88 after a career crafting a visual language that was unmistakably his own. And while his influence was global - from California to his native Yorkshire via Europe - his importance will also be greatly missed locally.