A parallel look at Hockney and Van Gogh's love of nature as expressed in their landscape paintings

David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy in this inspiring book which includes conversations with the artist and his latest artworks. On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year earlier, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new Normandy drawings and paintings alongside works by Van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, color, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see . . . but about how to live.

This special edition traces David Hockney's work over the course of six decades. We follow his stylistic development and experience how he reinvents himself again and again--from his teenage years at art school to the extensive portrait series, iPad drawings, and landscape paintings of recent years. The volume contains illustrations of all his important works, plus drawings, prints, portrait photos, and exhibition views, as well as a chronological text on his life and work, quoting extensively from contemporary reviews and Hockney's own reflections on art. About the series TASCHEN turns 40 this year! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. In 2020, we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program--now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

“Sumptuously illustrated, this radiant volume encapsulates what it truly means to be a visual artist.” —Booklist David Hockney’s exuberant work is highly praised and widely celebrated—he is perhaps the world’s most popular living painter. But he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney’s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney’s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition’s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist’s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comédie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio. The conversations between Hockney and Gayford are punctuated by surprising and revealing observations on other artists—Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso among them—and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of Yorkshire, Hockney’s birthplace, and California.

Vincent van Gogh believed that one had to learn to read, just as one had to learn to see and learn to live. Van Gogh conveyed a message in his work about the path that he himself followed that was "more true to life," the path that human beings walk in their turbulent existence, the pilgrimage along the various stages of the road of life. He does not speak about the meaning of life but about the true art of living. It is fascinating to see and read the moving way in which he wrestled with the deep human questions of the whence, why, and whither of life. He did not see himself doing this on his own but acknowledged kindred spirits and allies in preachers, preacher-poets, painters, writers, and other artists who also attempted to find their own way through life in a similar fashion. Van Gogh was aware, like no other, of his duty and task in life: his vocation as human being and artist. That means that he was well acquainted with loneliness, fear, and despair, including suicidal tendencies. Nevertheless, he understood himself as cut out for faith, rather than resignation. Human beings follow their life's path, through storms and dangers, on land and on sea, where the "star of the sea" (the Virgin Mary) helps them and provides light. Van Gogh rejected the unhealthy, sickly forms of religion, electing instead to embrace authentic forms of piety.