A Bigger Message Conversations with David Hockney

This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comedie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio. "