Hockney's work normalized gay desire and love by drawing and painting beautiful, healthy male nudes without fetishizing or over sexualizing. They are not pornographic and shocking - they are sentimental and emotional. He depicted his friends and lovers and so his nudes were less a political or social statement but more a familiar and personal subject matter.
He thus took the private and made it public. When looking at his work I can sense a narrative and imagine Hockney, the model, their relationship and all the emotional melodrama of ups and downs that they lived. This makes his nudes especially interesting to me because they are real people. The aspect of sincerity comes back and they are not only standing naked posing for Hockney. They and the artist himself are naked in the respect that they are letting the viewer into their world. In the painting Portrait of an Artist Hockney paints Peter Schlesinger, a former student and lover. The painting is very much about Hockney's sentiments and feelings for Peter. Their relationship had recently ended but Hockney still chose to use Peter as the standing figure in the paining though preferred not to interact with Peter for almost 2 years in order to get over him (Livingstone 1996).
 |
| Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures), 1972 |
 |
| Peter Schelinger, London, 1972 |
 |
| Gregory Swimming, Los Angeles, March 31st 1982 |
Hockney often relied on photography as an aid to his painting, capturing detail and allowing him to prepare and work faster with the quick drying acrylic. Eventually Hockney used photography to deal with the notion of representation and the photographs became the final work. This documentary use of photography reinforces the idea that the depicted is heavily based in the real world of the artist.
 |
| Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool, 1966 |
 |
| Photograph taken for painting Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool, 1966 |
Some of Hockney's other favorite models with whom he had developed relationships were Ian Falconer and Gregory Evans.
 |
| Peter, Alberdo la Flora, Rome, 1967 |
 |
| Gregory Leaning Nude, 1975 |
 |
| Gregory With gym Socks, 1976 |
 |
| Ian Washing his Hair, London, Jan 1983 |
 |
| David Hockney & Ian Falconer |
 |
| Ian Falconer & David Hockney, Los Angeles, 1982 |
Livingstone, Marco, David Hockney, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1996.
Mahon, Alyce, Eroticism & Art, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2005.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Stuff to watch:
A Bigger Splash, directed by Jack Hazan, 1973
