Hockney, 82, stubs out LA to smoke freely in France
Artist turns his back on clean-living California for Normandy where he can enjoy cigarettes with food
HE IS arguably Los Angeles’ famous artist, despite hailing Bradford.
But David Hockney has revealed that he is turning his back on the city where he painted some of his greatest works, because of America’s censorious attitude to smoking.
The 82-year-old, who first moved to the city in 1964 after leaving art school in London, told The Wall Street Journal he is relocating to Normandy so that he can eat and smoke at the same time.
“I’d like to just work and paint,” he told the paper, two days before his planned move. “The French know how to live. They know about pleasure.”
Once considered one of America’s most licentious cities, LA in recent decades has become a haven of clean living. It has some of the country’s strictest laws on smoking, which is banned in all public places, including outside restaurants and bars.
From his LA studio, surrounded by cigarette butts which he reportedly extinguishes on his carpet, the man considered one of Britain’s greatest modern artists offered a candid assessment of the future.
“I’ve smoked for more than 60 years but I think I’m quite healthy. I’m 82. How much longer do I have? I’m going to die of either a smoking-related illness or a non-smoking-related illness.”
He said he made an impulse decision to buy a house in Normandy last year after he “fell in love” with a property he saw for just 25 minutes. Hockney was holidaying in France after the unveiling last June of a stained-glass window he had designed for Westminster most Abbey to celebrate the Queen’s reign. from Hockney said he was not interested in personal fame and enjoyed the seclusion his Normandy home offered. “I have the vanity of an artist,” he said. “I want my work to be seen. But I don’t have to be seen.” His routine involves an early start to watch the sunrise, a morning’s work followed by a fourcourse, €13 (£11.63) lunch at a local café – his only meal of the day. He sometimes takes an afternoon nap before working into the evening.
The house dates back to 1650, and its array of cherry, pear and apple trees, hawthorn thickets and elderflower patches formed the inspiration for a new 24-panel work which will go on display in New York later this month. Hockney’s 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) became the most expensive painting by a living artist when it was auctioned last year for $90 million (£73 million) – a record broken this year by Jeff Koons. But he has questioned the huge sums that are paid for his work: “I want to ignore it. I’ve had sufficient money to do what I liked every day for the last 60 years. All I’m interested in is working. Artists don’t retire.” Hockney has made no plans for his artwork, up to half of which he has kept, but he will probably bequeath it to various museums.