Art like Life will just go on, and in the case of these two excellent new Exhibits at the National Portrait Galley in London they should be still there when we stop self-quarantining.
Sir David Hockney is probably the greatest living queer artist in the world. At the age of 82 he is still working, but equally important, he and his art, and still being celebrated in his lifetime.
“David Hockney Drawing From Life” is the first major exhibition devoted to his drawings in over twenty years. The retrospective explores Hockney as a draughtsman from the 1950s to the present by focusing on depictions of himself and a small group of sitters close to him: his muse, Celia Birtwell; his mother, Laura Hockney; and friends, the curator, Gregory Evans, and master printer, Maurice Payne.
Featuring around 150 works from public and private collections across the world, as well as from the David Hockney Foundation and the artist, the exhibition will trace the trajectory of his practice by revisiting these five subjects over a period of six decades. Highlights include a series of new portraits; colored pencil drawings created in Paris in the early 1970s; composite Polaroid portraits from the 1980s; and a selection of drawings from an intense period of self-scrutiny during the 1980s when the artist created a self-portrait every day over a period of two months.
27 February – 28 June 2020 Open daily 10.00 – 18.00 / Friday until 21.00 Wolfson Gallery National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE https://www.npg.org.uk/
This major new queer exhibition explores the extravagant world of the glamorous and stylish ‘Bright Young Things’ of the twenties and thirties, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton. It will bring to life a deliriously eccentric, glamorous and creative era of British cultural life, combining High Society and the avant-garde, artists and writers, socialites and partygoers.
Featuring the leading cast of the ‘Bright Young Things’, many of whom Beaton would call friends – Anna May Wong, Oliver Messel and Stephen Tennant among others, this show charts Beaton’s transformation from middle-class suburban schoolboy to glittering society figure and the unrivaled star of Vogue. In addition to Beaton’s own portraits, the exhibition also features paintings by friends and artists including Rex Whistler, Henry Lamb, and Augustus John.
12 March – 7 June 2020 Open daily 10.00 – 18.00/ Friday until 21.00 Porter Plus National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE https://www.npg.org.uk/
If you cannot make the shows, you can still look at in the comfort of your Home, as the Exhibition Catalogues are available at AMAZON and good book shops everywhere
