The Guardian’s Review of David Hockney – Back In LA (BBC Radio 4)

Bright, sharp and wittily enhanced by music (West Coast jazz, traditional accordion, accordion jazz), anyone contemplating seeing the new Hockneys should go first to iPlayer and have a listen

Gillian Reynolds reviews David Hockney – Back In LA in The Telegraph 27/06/2016

David Hockney – Back In LA (Radio 4, Monday) was Martin Gayford’s portrait of Hockney’s latest exhibition, just opened at the Royal Academy. This project, 82 portraits of friends (Gayford among them) painted on identically sized canvases as they sat, each of them for three days at a time, in the same chair, is what has made Hockney paint again after a severe depression, a small stroke and the accidental death of an associate. The Telegraph’s Mark Hudson wrote yesterday he was entertained by the exhibition, appalled at its lack of ambition. Others have been kinder.

This radio feature offered different perspectives: what is it like to have your portrait painted; what a portrait says about both subject and artist; what is it like to watch the process. Bright, sharp and wittily enhanced by music (West Coast jazz, traditional accordion, accordion jazz), anyone contemplating seeing the new Hockneys should go first to iPlayer and have a listen. It will give us something to ponder as we queue, and queue we will.