Fondation Louis Vuitton presents David Hockney’s largest ever exhibition
David Hockney is one of the most influential artists of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It’s only natural, then, that Louis Vuitton has selected the eighty- seven-year-old master — who has been revolutionising our understanding of art for seven decades in the same way the Maison has our perception of fashion — to claim Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Paris-based building building as his canvas. But Hockney’s sprawling retrospective is by no means a nostalgic victory lap. It doesn’t simply celebrate the pop art pioneer who made swimming pools iconic in the ’60s — it transports viewers into Hockney’s current psyche with iPad paintings created during pandemic lockdowns, reimagined opera sets transformed into immersive dance halls and enigmatic new works inspired by Munch and Blake that blur the lines between astronomy and spirituality. Those recent pieces, painted in his London studio since 2023, represent what Hockney calls his most mysterious period yet — one that Louis Vuitton is opening up to the world this summer.
The exhibition’s ambitious scope — spanning Hockney’s 1955 Portrait of My Father to works completed just months ago — reveals an artist who refuses to slow down or repeat himself, much like the Maison’s late founder. The personal touch is also ever-evident throughout the space — Hockney has personally orchestrated every aspect of the show’s eleven galleries, working closely with his studio team to create what he self-professes is his largest ever exhibition. French curator Suzanne Pagé has structured the journey to highlight the past twenty-five years, when Hockney split his time between Yorkshire’s changing seasons, Normandy’s shifting light, and London’s urban energy. The result feels less like a traditional retrospective and more like stepping directly into the artist’s restless imagination — where Renaissance masters dialogue with digital technology, where nature studies on tablets hang alongside century-old techniques and where the worlds of high art and fashion collide like a one-of-a-kind collage.
- ImagesCourtesy of Louis Vuitton
