Tamannaah Bhatia’s anarkali, Namrata Shirodkar's jacket look, Manish Malhotra in black: Who wore what at Hyderabad event Updated on: Aug 30, 2026, 13:22:55 IST By Akanksha Agnihotri Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link Tamannaah Bhatia, Manish Malhotra
North Korea's Defence Minister has been dismissed as part of a reshuffle of the country's military leadership, state media reported on Sunday (August 30, 2026). The "structural reorganization plans" were decided during a meeting on Saturday (August 29) led by Kim Jong Un
Woman shares reality of never-ending expenses after moving into a flat: ‘They just keep piling up’A woman shared how unexpected household expenses kept piling up after she moved into a rented flat. Published on: Aug 30, 2026, 12:46:57 IST By Mahipal Singh Chouhan Prefer HTon Google Share via
Tom Cruise, Abhishek Bachchan, Tara Sutaria, Tom Holland: 9 celebs who opened up about their learning disabilities Published on: Aug 30, 2026, 13:05:55 IST By Sanya Panwar Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link Tom Cruise and Tara Sutaria, as well as celebs such as Tom Holland
‘I worked over the weekends’: Employee seeks advice after HR questions them for being 15 minutes lateAn employee has turned to Reddit for advice after being questioned by HR over 15-minute delays at work. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026, 13:29:43 IST By Vaishali Kapila Prefer HTon Google Share via
Even as AI firms expand model capabilities, frontier labs continue to navigate a legal reckoning sparked by the first wave of copyright lawsuits that threatened to derail the generative AI boom. The argument from artists has been that AI output that looks like a specific piece of art is because
On the morning of August 29, more than 5,000 people of Indian-origin trickled into New York’s Madison Square Garden to see one man take the stage: Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party
NEET PG exam rescheduled for nearly 300 candidates over power outage in JaipurThe NEET PG examination for all candidates allotted to the particular centre will now be conducted on September 5. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026, 14:06:58 IST ANI Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link The NEET-PG examination
David Hockney believed in working from the heart

David Hockney believed in working from the heart
David Hockney believed in working from the heart
Britain’s boldest and most innovative painter died on June 11th, aged 88
Published on: Jun 14, 2026 1:58 PM IST The Economist Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link The painting, ten feet wide, is a window onto a world. The slim man in the peachy-pink jacket stands by the edge of the pool, looking down, uncertain. Someone is swimming underwater towards him; a young man, clad in modest white trunks. The hills beyond the pool make overlapping triangles of cerulean blue, of olive, sage and lime. They could be those of California or Provence—or even biblical Galilee. Ever since the Renaissance, artists such as Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt and Poussin have painted bathers washing off stains and sin amid the peace of nature. David Hockney, who created this scene, knew that. He studied them all. The swimmer’s arms are outstretched. In the blue amniotic water he could be an angel. Or a new lover. Photograph: Getty Images It is a double portrait, one of many that made him famous in the 1960s and 1970s on both sides of the Atlantic. The last time “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)” changed hands, in 2018, it became the most expensive picture by a living artist ever sold at auction. Swimming pools had held a special allure from the moment he flew into Los Angeles at the age of 26, having left behind the wintry grey of post-war England, and saw the little blue oblongs tiling the city below. So did the challenge of painting water, with its unscripted colours, its surfaces that shimmered in two dimensions, and its tension. Viewers standing in front of the painting got so drawn in to its many possibilities they never noticed the minutes passing. Having decided on the composition, he used props and photographs, played with perspectives, and paced out measurements in the studio: all the techniques he’d learned at art school and since. Mostly, though, he was working from the heart. Painting was how he made sense of the world. His brushes helped assuage the pain of the terrible break-up a year earlier, when the man standing by the pool had left him for a young Swede, tall and blond, and his mother, his staunchest ally, was the only person he could bear to have around. At least there had been work to get on with. Not that it came easily. For months he sensed something was wrong; the picture felt flat. Four weeks before his new show was due to open in New York, he reoriented the swimming pool and started afresh, thrilling at his renewed sense of purpose. Painting 18 hours a day, seven days a week, he finished it at last the night before the shippers came to take it to America. He felt like his hero Picasso, who liked to say: “I’m not painting; I’m exploring.” He’d always liked exploring. Although he was closest to his mother, a vegetarian Methodist who brought up five children on a modest budget, it was his father who inspired him. Time and again, Ken Hockney would come upon an old bicycle or a piece of domestic machinery, strip it down, paint it a bright colour and sell it as new. Though he was often short of paper, art became the heart of the boy’s life. In Bradford, in West Yorkshire, he’d wheel paints and brushes around in a cast-off pram that his father had repaired, looking for things to draw. When his English teacher asked him to read out a school essay, he told her he had made a collage instead, an intricate self-portrait. At 18 he made his first trip to London, dossing on the Tube until the museums opened and hitch-hiking back. He saw more art that day than he’d ever seen in his life. He became determined to study art in the city, but when he got to the Royal College of Art he found it beset with questions. Was abstract expressionism the only in-thing? Or was conceptual art equally important? And where did that leave figurative painting? Would he forever be condemned to painting Christmas cards? For his first work at the RCA he drew a human skeleton, which showed off how much he already knew about perspective and anatomy. The other students took note, and one, a former GI, offered him £5—£100 today—for it. (This was R.B. Kitaj, who went on to become a painter of note himself and a lifelong friend.) He stopped worrying about being contemporary and set about creating his own kind of art, art of his own time. He painted his London life: his friends, his homosexuality, his need to combine sex and love, his passion for the poems of Constantine Cavafy and Walt Whitman. But when he won a prize for an etching, he spent the money on a ticket to New York. And America freed him. He stopped at a drugstore and bought his first pair of thick-framed glasses. He dyed his hair blonde. He laughed with young men on the beach in California. Most of all he experimented with materials, exploring quick-drying acrylic, pastels, pencils, watercolours. He would fix on things for weeks on end. The broken surface and flying droplets of “A Bigger Splash” took him two weeks to paint. One summer, working with a printer friend in upstate New York, he made a series of luscious coloured pool works, using mounds of wet coloured papier-mâché, which he’d corral into different shapes, squeeze between presses and print on huge sheets of wet paper. The scintillating watery effects were as close as you could get to plunging into the water yourself. Finding new ways of making art filled his life with a sense of renewal. Flying on to California again, he found himself rising early, very early, and painting the canyons while the light was good, stopping only to take a step back and focus on a cigarette, his favourite pastime after painting. All his favourite painters had smoked—Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne. None had died young, which is how he justified it to himself. From California he travelled back to Yorkshire, his inexhaustible native place. There, after his mother died, he bought a house of his own. The attention he once paid to painting water he now gave to gigantic murals of the stands of trees he’d known as a child. Soon he would swap paints for pixels, becoming just as adept at painting portraits and landscapes first on his phone, then on an iPad, using a special app. In 2012 he covered four walls of the Royal Academy with iPad paintings of one particular bend of one lane in east Yorkshire, on every day of the year and in every sort of light. Just before covid-19 struck in 2019 he moved to Normandy, and posted digital pictures of the emerging spring. He painted a new scene every morning, even on Christmas Day. At the turn of the year, while waiting for his first jab, he embarked on yet another project: to convert his spring paintings into a massive galleria, a cathedral of green, enough to fill the Orangerie in Paris. If his poolside painting of the man in the pinky-peach jacket was a snapshot of a moment when he was 35, he described his final work as his Bayeux tapestry, a long walk through a whole life. Explore Lifestyle stories on Fashion,Health, Relationships, Festivals, Travel, recipe Fitness and Happy Eid 2026 Wishes. Get expert tips, trending updates, and practical ideas to improve your daily routine on Hindustan Times. Home/Lifestyle/David Hockney Believed In Working From The Heart See LessThe painting, ten feet wide, is a window onto a world. The slim man in the peachy-pink jacket stands by the edge of the pool, looking down, uncertain. Someone is swimming underwater towards him; a young man, clad in modest white trunks. The hills beyond the pool make overlapping triangles of cerulean blue, of olive, sage and lime. They could be those of California or Provence—or even biblical Galilee. Ever since the Renaissance, artists such as Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt and Poussin have painted bathers washing off stains and sin amid the peace of nature. David Hockney, who created this scene, knew that. He studied them all. The swimmer’s arms are outstretched. In the blue amniotic water he could be an angel. Or a new lover.
It is a double portrait, one of many that made him famous in the 1960s and 1970s on both sides of the Atlantic. The last time “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)” changed hands, in 2018, it became the most expensive picture by a living artist ever sold at auction. Swimming pools had held a special allure from the moment he flew into Los Angeles at the age of 26, having left behind the wintry grey of post-war England, and saw the little blue oblongs tiling the city below. So did the challenge of painting water, with its unscripted colours, its surfaces that shimmered in two dimensions, and its tension. Viewers standing in front of the painting got so drawn in to its many possibilities they never noticed the minutes passing.
Having decided on the composition, he used props and photographs, played with perspectives, and paced out measurements in the studio: all the techniques he’d learned at art school and since. Mostly, though, he was working from the heart. Painting was how he made sense of the world. His brushes helped assuage the pain of the terrible break-up a year earlier, when the man standing by the pool had left him for a young Swede, tall and blond, and his mother, his staunchest ally, was the only person he could bear to have around.
At least there had been work to get on with. Not that it came easily. For months he sensed something was wrong; the picture felt flat. Four weeks before his new show was due to open in New York, he reoriented the swimming pool and started afresh, thrilling at his renewed sense of purpose. Painting 18 hours a day, seven days a week, he finished it at last the night before the shippers came to take it to America. He felt like his hero Picasso, who liked to say: “I’m not painting; I’m exploring.”
He’d always liked exploring. Although he was closest to his mother, a vegetarian Methodist who brought up five children on a modest budget, it was his father who inspired him. Time and again, Ken Hockney would come upon an old bicycle or a piece of domestic machinery, strip it down, paint it a bright colour and sell it as new. Though he was often short of paper, art became the heart of the boy’s life. In Bradford, in West Yorkshire, he’d wheel paints and brushes around in a cast-off pram that his father had repaired, looking for things to draw. When his English teacher asked him to read out a school essay, he told her he had made a collage instead, an intricate self-portrait.
At 18 he made his first trip to London, dossing on the Tube until the museums opened and hitch-hiking back. He saw more art that day than he’d ever seen in his life. He became determined to study art in the city, but when he got to the Royal College of Art he found it beset with questions. Was abstract expressionism the only in-thing? Or was conceptual art equally important? And where did that leave figurative painting? Would he forever be condemned to painting Christmas cards? For his first work at the RCA he drew a human skeleton, which showed off how much he already knew about perspective and anatomy. The other students took note, and one, a former GI, offered him £5—£100 today—for it. (This was R.B. Kitaj, who went on to become a painter of note himself and a lifelong friend.) He stopped worrying about being contemporary and set about creating his own kind of art, art of his own time.
He painted his London life: his friends, his homosexuality, his need to combine sex and love, his passion for the poems of Constantine Cavafy and Walt Whitman. But when he won a prize for an etching, he spent the money on a ticket to New York. And America freed him. He stopped at a drugstore and bought his first pair of thick-framed glasses. He dyed his hair blonde. He laughed with young men on the beach in California. Most of all he experimented with materials, exploring quick-drying acrylic, pastels, pencils, watercolours. He would fix on things for weeks on end. The broken surface and flying droplets of “A Bigger Splash” took him two weeks to paint.
One summer, working with a printer friend in upstate New York, he made a series of luscious coloured pool works, using mounds of wet coloured papier-mâché, which he’d corral into different shapes, squeeze between presses and print on huge sheets of wet paper. The scintillating watery effects were as close as you could get to plunging into the water yourself.
Finding new ways of making art filled his life with a sense of renewal. Flying on to California again, he found himself rising early, very early, and painting the canyons while the light was good, stopping only to take a step back and focus on a cigarette, his favourite pastime after painting. All his favourite painters had smoked—Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne. None had died young, which is how he justified it to himself.
From California he travelled back to Yorkshire, his inexhaustible native place. There, after his mother died, he bought a house of his own. The attention he once paid to painting water he now gave to gigantic murals of the stands of trees he’d known as a child. Soon he would swap paints for pixels, becoming just as adept at painting portraits and landscapes first on his phone, then on an iPad, using a special app. In 2012 he covered four walls of the Royal Academy with iPad paintings of one particular bend of one lane in east Yorkshire, on every day of the year and in every sort of light. Just before covid-19 struck in 2019 he moved to Normandy, and posted digital pictures of the emerging spring. He painted a new scene every morning, even on Christmas Day. At the turn of the year, while waiting for his first jab, he embarked on yet another project: to convert his spring paintings into a massive galleria, a cathedral of green, enough to fill the Orangerie in Paris. If his poolside painting of the man in the pinky-peach jacket was a snapshot of a moment when he was 35, he described his final work as his Bayeux tapestry, a long walk through a whole life.
Source: HindustanTimes
Related Posts: David Hockney says moving Bayeux Tapestry to UK is Police find body believed to be of fugitive Australian shooter Missing 5-year-old Australian girl believed to be abducted School-bus-size object from SpaceX rocket believed to have crashed into moon's Einstein Crater Hindu' Raj Kapoor Believed In Islam As Well Four dead after wooden boat believed to be ferrying migrants into the U SpaceX rocket stage believed to have slammed into Moon Woman believed to be missing for 27 years had been locked in a room by parents Canoeing-Britain's Clarke wins fourth successive kayak cross world title Trump slams energy deal between California and Britain
A fever during the monsoon can be easy to brush off. But with mosquito-borne infections still circulating, when is it safer to stop waiting and get tested? Gujarat has reported a significant decline in mosquito-borne diseases this year, with malaria cases falling 45%, dengue by 39
1 days ago
Karnataka Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot accepted Minister B Nagendra's resignation. This resignation followed allegations in an Rs 89 crore corporation scam. Nagendra stated he resigned voluntarily to protect the party and government. The opposition BJP-JD(S) had intensified criticism and protests
1 days ago
In latest show of ‘car diplomacy’, PM Modi seen sharing a ride with Uzbekistan PresidentPM Modi and President Mirziyoyev were seen traveling together by car from the airport to the presidential palace, where they then held a dinner meeting. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026
1 days ago
Addressing concerns about compressed biogas (CBG) becoming increasingly expensive with the revised offtake price, the Union Petroleum Ministry assured the pricing cushioned with government-funded support and stacking with a substantially wider gas pool would avert any material price impact
1 days ago
JU political graffiti whitewashed after CM Adhikari’s remarks on campus politicsCPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, a former Kolkata mayor, criticised the move saying campuses encourage free thinking Published on: Aug 30, 2026, 14:01:11 IST By HT Correspondent
1 days ago
Manoj Jarange Patil began his hunger strike seeking OBC caste certificates for Marathas. He demands the disbanding of the Caste Verification Committee and threatens to protest in Mumbai. Jarange Patil wants Marathas to receive Kunbi caste certificates based on historical records
1 days ago
Bank Holiday Next Week: While digital banking services such as internet banking, mobile banking, UPI and ATM services will continue to remain available, physical bank branches of SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and other lenders will remain closed on the applicable dates and in the applicable cities
1 days ago
Delhi man kills schizophrenic son, lured him to shipping container on pretext of doctor visitPolice said the accused first smashed the victim’s head with a stone and then strangled him. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026, 06:43:07 IST By Karn Pratap Singh Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link A
1 days ago
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday demanded the registration of a first information report against those who carried out a “purification” ritual at a ground in Uttarakhand, where Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge had held a rally earlier this month
1 days ago
HDFC Bank CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan not seeking reappointment, to retire in October: ReportThe bank's board will fast-track the selection and appointment of Jagdishan's successor as MD and CEO, and complete the process “well within time”. Updated on: Aug 29, 2026
1 days ago
‘Good work is appreciated with more work’: Man warns employees about workplace ‘trap’A man warned that being too efficient at work could become a trap and urged employees to set clear boundaries. Published on: Aug 30, 2026, 06:36:52 IST By Mahipal Singh Chouhan Prefer HTon Google Share via
1 days ago
MicahJo Barnett parents: Who are Michelle Barnett and Felix Lora? Inside William Jewell RB's family after tragic deathWilliam Jewell College running back MicahJo Barnett died after suffering a medical emergency during the Cardinals’ season opener against Fort Lewis. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026
1 days ago
Filip Hrgovic ripped up the script and shattered Moses Itauma's world-title dream as the Briton appeared to punch himself out in an extraordinary heavyweight contest in London. Itauma, 21, controlled most of the fight and scored a second-round knockdown but faded as his relentless output caught up
1 days ago
Pharma industry stares down biggest patent cliff in decadesMore than $500 billion in projected annual drug sales face patent expirations in the coming years. Published on: Aug 29, 2026, 20:31:02 IST WSJ Prefer HTon Google Share via Copy link More than $500 billion in projected annual drug sales
1 days ago
Manchester City have opened talks with Liverpool about signing attacker Cody Gakpo. The Netherlands forward's future is set to become one of the key storylines heading into the final three days of the transfer window. The 27-year-old has attracted concrete interest from City and Tottenham Hotspur
1 days ago
China censors Tibet flood reports, viral video pulled down, foreign media restrictedReports from official Chinese outlets reportedly focused on rescue operations, with limited information about the scale of the damage caused by the floods. Updated on: Aug 30, 2026
1 days ago
New Delhi, [India] August 29 (ANI): The UAE's Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) has granted Starlink Satellite Communications LLC a 10-year General Space Services Licence to establish, operate and manage a public satellite communications network and provide
1 days ago
The Early Spring review: Jing Boran and Sun Qian turn a risky and complicated office romance into addictive televisionThe Early Spring review: This C-drama aired on August 26 and within ten episodes, it has taken the internet by storm with its mature workplace storytelling. Updated on: Aug 30
1 days ago
Subhash Ghai recalls ‘hatha paai’ with Salman Khan before Yuvvraaj, says he abused him: ‘Salim Khan said apologise’Before working on Yuvvraaj, Salman Khan and Subhash Ghai had a confrontation that escalated to a physical altercation, prompting Salim Khan to mediate. Updated on: Aug 30
1 days ago
Just Like That: 50 years on, why Mukesh’s voice still still resonates todayFifty years after his death, legendary singer Mukesh’s soulful voice, timeless songs and emotional depth continue to resonate with generations of listeners. Published on: Aug 30, 2026
1 days ago
The Delhi-NCR CNG price rises by Rs 3.89 per kg from August 29. Check new CNG rates in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida and Gurugram. CNG prices in Delhi-NCR have increased by Rs 3.89 per kg from 6 am on Saturday, August 29, putting higher fuel costs on car owners and commercial drivers
1 days ago
Woman opens up about the ‘6 to 10 shift’ after office hours: ‘When will I take out time for myself?’A woman shared how responsibilities after work had left her with little time to focus on her own growth. Published on: Aug 30, 2026, 07:21:41 IST By Mahipal Singh Chouhan Prefer HTon Google
1 days ago
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday asked newspaper Anandabazar Patrika to apologise for using the phrase “saffron hooliganism” in its headline to describe the August 20 clash between student groups at Jadavpur University. “I will ask a news outlet in West Bengal to do
1 days ago
Across the globe in Australia, a toddler with speech delays delighted her family with her first word - "orange" - after she and her twin sister received a free book in the post about colours. It came from Imagination Library, the literacy programme begun by late global superstar Dolly Parton
1 days ago
The US government plans a 35% passive stake in Alejandro Betancourt's energy company. It also seeks preferential rights to purchase 20% of production at cost. This investment is structured through penny warrants for equity without significant capital outlay
1 days ago
Former Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik has appealed to BJP MPs from the state. He urged them to demand the reversal of the recently passed mining bill. Patnaik stated the legislation would cause significant financial losses for Odisha. He also mentioned the bill takes away control over the state's mineral
1 days ago
Here is important news for State Bank of India (SBI) account holders. If you have an account with the State Bank, you should be aware of this update, as it will impact your finances starting October 1st. SBI has made significant changes to its transaction charge policies—specifically regarding
1 days ago