Overview

"Born in 1937 in a small town in the north of England, David Hockney had to fight to become an artist. After leaving his home in Bradford for the Royal College of Art in London, his career flourished, but he continued to struggle with a sense of not belonging, because of his homosexuality, which had yet to be decriminalized, and his inclination for a figurative style of art not sufficiently ""contemporary"" to be valued. Trips to New York and California--where he would live for many years and paint his iconic swimming pools--introduced him to new scenes and new loves, beginning a journey that would take him through the fraught years of the AIDS epidemic. A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, Life of David Hockney offers an accessible overview of the painter who shook the world of art with a vitality and freedom that neither heartbreak nor illness nor loss could corrode."

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9781590519837

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Reviews

Catherine Cusset magnificently pays homage to the artist, revisiting half a century of art history and describing David Hockney's loves, betrayals of the body, and losses. --Lire At the heart of this exercise in admiration, David Hockney is not only the artist who loves swimming pools, beautiful boys, trees, and the English countryside. He also appears as a fragile hero. --L'Obs A work halfway between novel and biography, which plunges us into the fascinating world of the famous British figurative artist. --La Presse

Fagan's translation from the French reveals a delicate, empathetic writer unabashedly following Hockney from his birth in 1937 with sympathy and understanding...Cusset gets him--you should too. --Boston Herald Cusset magnificently pays homage to the artist, revisiting half a century of art history. --Lire At the heart of this exercise in admiration, David Hockney is not only the artist who loves swimming pools, beautiful boys, trees, and the English countryside. He also appears as a fragile hero. --L'Obs A work halfway between novel and biography, which plunges us into the fascinating world of the famous British figurative artist. --La Presse

Fagan's translation from the French reveals a delicate, empathetic writer unabashedly following Hockney from his birth in 1937 with sympathy and understanding...Cusset gets him--you should too. --Boston Herald Catherine Cusset magnificently pays homage to the artist, revisiting half a century of art history and describing David Hockney's loves, betrayals of the body, and losses. --Lire At the heart of this exercise in admiration, David Hockney is not only the artist who loves swimming pools, beautiful boys, trees, and the English countryside. He also appears as a fragile hero. --L'Obs A work halfway between novel and biography, which plunges us into the fascinating world of the famous British figurative artist. --La Presse

A delicate, empathetic writer unabashedly following Hockney from his birth in 1937 with sympathy and understanding...Cusset gets him--you should too. --Boston Herald A perfect short expos of Hockney's life. --Kirkus Reviews A dazzling portrait of a man striving for a life at odds with the world. Beautiful, fascinating, and heartrending--this book amazes. I couldn't put it down. --Nick White, author of Sweet and Low Cusset magnificently pays homage to the artist, revisiting half a century of art history. --Lire At the heart of this exercise in admiration, David Hockney is not only the artist who loves swimming pools, beautiful boys, trees, and the English countryside. He also appears as a fragile hero. --L'Obs A work halfway between novel and biography, which plunges us into the fascinating world of the famous British figurative artist. --La Presse

Author Information

Catherine Cusset was born in Paris in 1963. A graduate of the cole Normale Superieure in Paris and agregee in classics, she taught eighteenth-century French literature at Yale from 1991 to 2002. She is the author of thirteen novels, including The Story of Jane and L'autre qu'on adorait (shortlisted for the 2016 Prix Goncourt), and has been translated into seventeen languages. Cusset lives in Manhattan with her American husband and daughter. Teresa Lavender Fagan is a freelance translator. She has published more than a dozen book-length translations, including Jean Bottero's The Oldest Cuisine in the World- Cooking in Mesopotamia and The Life of David Hockney, forthcoming from Other Press.

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