Oh, what a life!
So, it’s not a biography but it’s not NOT a biography either. Certainly not an autobiography, through the person in question reckons he could recognise himself, and it’s not really a novel. Or is it?
Anyway, it won the Advocate Book of the Year prize, so a big thumbs up from the gays for this… erm, account of the life of our greatest living painter, David Hockney. Born in Bradford in the '30s, he went on to become a painter of sunny swimming pools and naked boys clambering out of those sunny swimming pools and naked men lying on beds in their nude… oh, and trees.
A character, a gentleman, a scholar and perhaps once upon a time an acrobat, David Hockney is pure national treasure and this, erm, book is, it says from a New York Times review on the cover, ‘as sunny as the poolside California that was the artist’s longtime muse…’ And we could all use a bit of that.
David Hockney: A Life by Catherine Cusset, Arcadia, £9.99
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