The Wonderful World of Hockney
“I’d passed the driving test, bought a car, driven to Las Vegas and won some money, got myself a studio, and started painting all in a week."
Letters from Vienna #64
The Wonderful World of Hockney
In January 1964 David Hockney moved to Los Angeles “without much of a plan”.[1] “Part of its glamorous appeal was sex, or the perceived availability of it, not just the perfect bodies he had yearned after through the pages of “Physique Pictorial”, but the sleazy, homoerotic side as portrayed in John Rechy’s “City of Night”, his novel of hustlers in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans.”[2]
Approaching Los Angeles airport Hockney became more and more excited. “I remember flying in on an afternoon, and as we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realised that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate. Because you can use it all year round, even cheap apartment blocks have pools…”
“…I was so excited”, he wrote. “I think it was partly a sexual fascination and attraction…I checked into this motel and walked on the beach and I was looking for the town and couldn’t see it. And I saw some lights and I thought, that must be it. I walked two miles and when I got there all it was was a big gas station, so brightly lit I’d thought it was the city…”
“…Since the only knowledge Hockney had of Los Angeles was derived from “City of Night”, he decided to visit Pershing Square to try and experience first-hand the sleazy, sexy, hot nightlife so evocatively described by Rechy, the world of “the nervous fugitives from Times Square, Market Street, SF, the French Quarter–masculine hustlers looking for lonely fruits to score from…”
“Checking on a map, Hockney saw that Wilshire Boulevard ran close to the Tumble Inn, ending a few blocks from Pershing Square, so he jumped on his new bike. There were two things, however, he had failed to take into account. The first was the distance, which was nearly seventeen miles, and the second was the fact that the real Pershing Square might be different from that described in the novel.”
““I started cycling,” he later wrote. “I got to Pershing Square and it was deserted; about nine in the evening, just got dark, not a soul there. I thought, where is everybody?””
After abandoning his bike, he got a driving license: “How easily I got it terrified me…” and a car, a white Ford falcon with a bright red stripe down the side.
“Within a week of arriving…in this strange city, not knowing a soul,” he noted, “I’d passed the driving test, bought a car, driven to Las Vegas and won some money, got myself a studio, started painting all in a week. And I thought: it’s just how I imagined it would be.”[3]
He discovered that in America acrylic paint was far superior to the British variety and started to use it for paintings such as “Man in Shower in Beverly Hills.”
Ossie Clark
Later that year he went on a road trip with Ossie Clark, a bisexual fashion design student at the Royal College of Art, friend of Mo McDermott (who would later become Hockney’s assistant) and lover of Celia Birtwell (who went on to become Hockney’s muse), with whom Hockney had had an affair in 1963. They both drove to New York where Hockney had an exhibition at the Alan Gallery and Clark hung out with the Velvet Underground.
Clark later “called Birtwell and begged her to come back to him, telling her how much he had missed her and how tired he was of the lifestyle he had been leading. Within a few weeks he had moved in to the flat she was renting in St Quintin Avenue, where they would enjoy their happiest months together.”[4]
“Clark’s career had taken off in 1965, when Alice Pollock, the owner of the fashionable boutique Quorum, on the King’s Road, had signed him up exclusively, and he was soon dressing the rich and famous at a time when London was seen as the most swinging city in the world, as well as designing stage costumes for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He had no qualms about throwing himself full pelt into the lifestyle that accompanied fame, but he had no backup and that was to be his downfall. “Ossie was a terrific person,” says David, “but his tragedy was that he needed somebody to organise him, like I had Kasmin (Hockney’s gallerist). But he didn’t have anyone who could do that for him at that point. The problem was simple, in that he used to work very hard to produce an incredible collection and the moment he had some money, then he would stop. He was a rock ‘n’ roller and he always wanted to go off to the rock ‘n’ roll parties.” As the fame and the money went to Clark’s head, he started taking too many drugs, became sexually promiscuous, and was often violent to Birtwell, who leant on Schlesinger (Hockney’s boyfriend) and Hockney for support.”[5]
Celia Birtwell
Birtwell, like Hockney and Clark, also came from the north of England. “Her father was an estimating engineer in the textile business, and her mother was a seamstress, making wedding dresses in Manchester; they brought up three daughters in a house full of books and flowers. She was the eldest and arty, and she always knew what she wanted from life was new experiences. At Salford Art School, studying textile design, she met the rebellious young Mo McDermott, who in turn introduced her to “this really mad boy” called Ossie Clark”. Through Clark she got to know Hockney, with whom she had a lot of fun.[6]
“I soon discovered the great thing about her” Hockney recalled “is that she is very funny and within ten minutes of meeting each other we were always laughing, and that’s what I loved about her.”[7]
In August 1969 Clark and Birtwell married and in April 1970 Hockney portrayed them in his painting: “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy”.
“The setting of the painting is the Clarks’ flat in Linden Gardens, which was painted first; Clark and Birtwell then came to Powis Terrace on numerous occasions during which Hockney attempted to paint them directly onto the painting of the room, an exercise made even more tricky by the fact that it was contre-jour. “The figures are nearly life-size; it’s difficult painting figures like that, and it was quite a struggle,” he wrote. “They posed for a long time, both Ossie and Celia. Ossie was painted many, many times: I took it out and put it in, out and in. I probably painted the head about twelve times; drawn and painted and then completely removed, and then out in again and again. You can see the paint gets thicker there.”[8] The painting was finished in May 1971 and is currently to be seen in the Kunstforum Bank Austria, which has been show-casing modern art since 1980 and which generously provided the photos for this letter.
Other works on display include: The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles I), 1962:
My Parents, 1977:
and George Lawson and Wayne Sleep, 1972–1975:
[1] p.48 David Hockney, A Chronology, edited by David Hockney & Hans Werner Holzwarth
[2] p.141 Hockney A Rake’s Progress, Christopher Simon Sykes
[3] Ibid pp.143-144
[4] pp.154-157 Ibid
[5] p.219 Ibid
[6] p.217 Ibid
[7] p.219 Ibid
[8] pp.236-237 Ibid