The Colors of the World

Painting by David Hockney

By Dan Hagen

At Barnes and Noble Saturday, I bought a biography of David Hockney by Christopher Simon Sykes. Shyly but firmly, from childhood on, Hockney recognized and defended his own unique vividness, polishing it into a mirror that reflected the full colors of the world of his times. 

Arriving in LA breathless as a virtually unknown British artist, he was almost immediately dining and conversing with the famous writer Christopher Isherwood and Jack Larson, TV’s Jimmy Olsen of the 1950s. I love finding out about that kind of pleasant strangeness in life.