David Hockney sitting in the living room of his Malibu house, March 1988 Photo: © Condé Nast Archive / Corbis Artwork: © 2015 David Hockney
The streetview of Hockney's beach house studio (below) is quite bleak, and yet inside 21039 Pacific Coast Highway when Hockney worked in it exploded with light and colour. Above is a photo of Hockney in the beach house: the jungle of plants through the window, the bright furniture, the brilliantly white walls. I should think that growing up in Bradford during the war and the bomb-damaged 1950s and then being teleported to sunny California of turquoise and hot pink would hit all the rods and cones of the eye like a thunderbolt. So gay, in the old sense of the word, so carefree. So sun-filled. So primary.
Below is his 1980 painting, Mulholland Drive: the Road to the Studio. Compared to the actual road to the studio there is something spiritual about the colour. This is more than just using acrylics straight from the tube, it is an affirmation of an intensely vivid new life.
David Hockney. Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, 1980 acrylic on canvas, 86x243 in.