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 earlier, 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 art critic Martin
Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are
illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new Normandy 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, color, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us,
not only about how to see . . . but about how to live.
