David Hockney

I often need to use the search engine of my Missives (upper left) to check what I have written about before. I did so as I thought of writing about David Hockney (1937-2026). I have mentioned him often, but never written solely about the artist himself. Hockney died earlier this month, and as always happens, a slew of articles have been written about him and his work now that he is gone.

Hockney was born in Yorkshire, England, and studied, lived, and worked there until he was in his forties. In the 1960’s, he visited the United States often and even came over to teach. Then in 1978, he moved to Los Angeles. He also acquired a studio in Normandy during the last years of his life, but always kept a home in England, and that is where he died. In 1994, Prince and now King Charles III, referred to Hockney as a dear friend, and when the artist died, the BBC headline read “King leads tributes to ‘giant of the art world’ David Hockney”.

What particularly captured my attention was the headline in the New York Times in an article by Alex Marshall, “With iPhones and Faxes, David Hockney Embraced Tech”. I have dwelled on the issue of keeping up with the advances in technology, particularly in the area of the arts. This article cited Hockney’s referring back to the 19th century, when the metal paint tube suddenly allowed artists to take their paints wherever they wished to work.

While others bemoaned and feared all the advances, Hockney embraced them. He created art with the Polaroid Camera, the fax machine, photocopiers, iPads, and iPhones. I wonder how he felt about AI and how it affected his interests?

I was surprised to learn how he used faxes in his art. Apparently, he did not consider the fax the end product, but rather a vehicle to disseminate his art, sending friends images of drawings he had done. When he found that some of his faxes were in an auction sale, he objected, stating that they were made to be given away, adding, “How would I be paid?” They were sold anyway, and some have found their way into museums. The Met, for instance, has about 25 of these faxes in its collection. Here is an example that was sold in Los Angeles.

Defining Hockney’s style is not simple. Cubism had an influence, while flattened images and bright colors became staples of his work. He was certainly drawn to the bright sunlight of Southern California. Another article in the N.Y. Times by Jori Finkel is titled, “How David Hockney Taught Los Angeles to See Itself”. “A Brit, he became a symbol of the city’s culture, stylish and alienating, with his vivid swimming pool paintings and embrace of the SoCal (Southern California) light, hedonism and gay liberation.” Here are two illustrations: a photomontage Nude, 17th June 1984, and a painting, Mulholand Drive.

Finkel tells us that Hockney did not only use high tech. In 1988, he also used a broom. No, not to paint with but to put a brush on so that he could reach the bottom of a pool. The device allowed him to paint swooshes of bright blue on the bottom of the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This reminded me of half a century ago, my wife and I being stopped in the halls of the Metropolitan Museum by the head of the 20th century art department, Henry Geldzahler, who pulled out a Kodak envelope with prints from an entire roll of photographs Hockney had taken of Henry floating in a pool and Christopher, his life partner, diving in and swimming. Henry was so proud of those photos that he wanted us to see every last one of them.

Geldzahler became pivotal to the contemporary art world, having nearly daily phone calls with Andy Warhol. He also brought artists like Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning to the fore. But he was a close friend of Hockney for many years.  Henry and Christopher were the subject of one of his greatest paintings from 1969, which brought $49.5 million in 2019 at a Christie’s London sale.

In summing up, one might say that Hockney wore a coat of many colors. He did not concern himself with the tenets of an artist’s traditional tools and methods. Instead, he enjoyed exploring all the possibilities that technology offered him.

Buying with One’s Ears

We all do it, though we don’t always realize it… buy with our ears rather than our eyes, and sometimes without thinking. In our everyday lives, if we see the word “Sale,” we pay attention immediately. Another word that grabs our attention and the most magical word of all, or so it was explained to me by my advertising agent many years ago, is “Free”.

We don’t necessarily buy right away, but if we think we want it at some time or think maybe we can use it in the future, and it's on sale ... Do we want to go to that museum or exhibition, and if it is free admission today? Maybe this is an opportunity to take advantage of it being free.

Buying with our ears is also something we do as art collectors, though we have to be wary of it. You wouldn’t see the word “free” at an art gallery or auction house, but “sale” sometimes occurs in a gallery ad. That usually worries me, thinking there must be something wrong with the work of art or that the artist is surely not selling well. That is just my suspicious mind. It is quite possible that the gallery just wants to expose the artist more to the general public, or maybe, just maybe, the gallery can get a well-known but tight-fisted collector to buy it. Then the gallery can say, “You know the CEO of a major company bought one recently.”

The idea, of course, is to grab your attention but also to intrigue a potential buyer. I recently saw an ad announcing a “Newly Confirmed Lucien Freud Debuts in London”. If it was newly confirmed, it was either doubted before or found in someone’s attic. I prefer the latter to the former. Debates over authenticity always existed, but a consistent attribution is always preferable. Otherwise, one has to worry about what the next expert has to say.

Here is another one: “Rediscovered Constable Goes on View for First Time in Decades”. That is enticing, we love to learn about discoveries, kind of like unearthing a treasure, even if you did not do it personally.

A provenance from a well-known collector or personage is exciting because you can feel you have a relationship with that individual. Or in the case of a painting by Winston Churchill, you have touched a piece of history.

In the auction room or gallery, people want to hear why they should buy the work of art. Some people like scandal, and I heard of someone being proud they owned something that had belonged to Jeffrey Epstein … chacun à son goût.

Better, of course, if you can say it compares with this other important work. Even better if you can tell a story, a true one like this…. We had a good friend and client, Baroness Clarice de Rothschild, of the Vienna Rothschilds. After WWII, she went into the salt mine at Altaussee, Austria, where Hitler’s art squad had neatly placed her treasures all together. She didn’t get everything from their five palaces, but more than enough to furnish her Park Avenue apartment in New York. She sold much of the rest through our gallery, Rosenberg & Stiebel. I could have also added that she crashed my first wedding at the Plaza Hotel! My parents would not have dared to ask a Rothschild for a personal event. I mention this last part because if you tell the human story around a work of art, it brings the piece closer to the collector.

If you read my Missives regularly, you are probably tired of my repeating this, but I will continue to remind my readers to buy a work of art because you want to live with it or simply feel you can’t live without it!

Affairs of Art

Some weeks ago, an individual unknown to me got in touch to ask whether we had any drawings that might be of interest. His inquiry stemmed from finding a video we had made 37 years ago called “Affairs of Art”. When I told him that I was impressed that he had watched such an outdated video, he wrote back, “That video isn't outdated - it's history”. We had commissioned “Affairs of Art” to tell the history of our gallery, Rosenberg & Stiebel founded in Frankfurt am Main, Germany around 1870 and celebrating its 50th anniversary in the United States. This recent comment had me thinking and looking at it in a totally different light.

To go back to the beginning, Karl Katz who was a scholar, curator and a museum director, became head of the Department of Special Projects at the Metropolitan Museum in 1971. By 1980 he had established a department of film and television as a joint venture between the Met and the Getty. It’s first project was to create a database of all films that had been made about art. Karl then recruited teams of curators and videographers to pitch ideas for productions in the joint venture. One such team was between a young videographer, David Kutz and my wife, Penelope Hunter-Stiebel. They wrote a proposal for a short film recreating the aftermath of the fire that destroyed the Louvre workshop and art collection of the early 18th century French cabinet maker André Charles Boulle. Unfortunately, the project was not chosen for production.

This failure, however, introduced us to David Kutz and we hired him to create “Affairs of Art”. We had hired a PR firm as well to help us publicize our 50th anniversary but when the head of it saw the first cut of the film, she fired us! So much for a PR agent. By happenstance, Jim Rosenthal a film editor from LA, who had worked with David on a string of HBO projects, was staying with him. Rosenthal spent a few days of his New York visit re-editing the raw footage. We were thrilled with the results which you will see if you click on the link below.

We wanted to show what the gallery had accomplished over that past half century. Who would we want to help tell the gallery’s story? Of course, that had to include my mother and father, who were forced to leave Germany in the 1930’s, and my father being the only remaining participant in the firm in Frankfurt. I also wanted to have individuals from the museum world and collectors we had dealt with. We were lucky and very honored to put together a most illustrious group.

Liliane de Rothschild represented the French branch of the Rothschild family, fabled for their collections. Leonard Lauder heir to the cosmetics firm, Estée Lauder, is best known for his Cubist collection, which was to go the Metropolitan Museum, but, little know, he was also a collector of French 18th century furniture. Michel David-Weill being the third generation of his family as Chairman of the banking house Lazard as well as all being great art collectors. Patrick Gerschel was a New York investment banker, and his wife Elizabeth enjoyed surrounding themselves with French art of the 18th century. Sherman Lee and Tom Hovingwere directors of two of the most important museums in the country, The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum. I wanted to have both directors since their views of museology were quite different. Tom Hoving was a showman he literally opened the Metropolitan Museum to a far wider public with his populist approach and blockbuster exhibitions. His expanded museum shop included reproductions and souvenirs made by the museum and had branches around the city. Sherman Lee, however, was a quiet, serious scholar who kept his museum store small, within the museum building and focused on books relating to the museum’s collections. Still, they shared a deep love of art and made major acquisitions for their institutions.

All of these participants in our film had fascinating and influential lives and made a difference to the art world but unfortunately most are no longer with us. I believe it is seriously worthwhile listening to what they had to say about art and collecting. 

Digital Museums for Digital Art

In October of 2023, I posted a Missive called “Chat GPT Art Exhibit.” At that time, I spoke of the fear of A.I. taking the place of people such as curators. Here, I am going to address the other great fear, that A.I. is going to replace artists. I have also written that digital art is merely using the internet as a tool to create art, just like pencil, brush, paint, and photography. Half a century ago, we started to collect photographs, and there was still the attitude that photography was not really art because it was not an original creation but rather just a copy of nature.

Therefore, we could buy for hundreds of dollars what today would bring thousands if not tens of thousands. That, however, was not why we collected and we sold and gave away the collection so we could start our Native American collection. My belief is that the way a photographer sees things and captures them through his lens, which makes the photograph creative or mundane, is now accepted.



We have many museums in the United States that include digital art in their collections, but I have not found a museum in this country devoted solely to it. Let me know if I am incorrect. There have been temporary exhibitions of digital art experiences, and I have written about one of them, but they have been presented in rented spaces.

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2022/04/beyond-van-gogh.html

There was an article in a recent post on Artnet by Jo Lawson-Tancred telling us that Dubai is planning a huge new museum dedicated to digital art. This will not only become a vehicle for using the tools of A.I. to create art, but it will entail jobs for administrators, curators, and techies to create and maintain the equipment needed, as well as security guards and all the others involved in maintaining a museum.

According to the article, the creation of this Museum of Digital Art (MODA) denotes the competition across the Gulf States to dominate the fast-growing field of tech-driven culture as the museum will show various art forms that rely on emerging technologies. The author tells us that MODA will be part of a $27 billion transformation of Dubai’s financial center as a tech hub. Dubai is not alone, two years ago Saudi Arabia launched it own media Institute, Diriyah Art Futures, with an exhibition “Art Must Be Artificial: Perspectives of A.I. in the Visual Arts”.

Two years ago, Emilia Wang wrote an article for Artnet on teamLab in Tokyo, and there I found a paragraph that expressed my feeling on A.I. art precisely: “Naturally, the technological underpinnings of the works spark interest, but teamLab doesn’t want its audience to get fixated on the mechanisms. Takashi Kudo explained, ‘Just like there is watercolor and oil paint, the works move between spaces and through mediums such as projection and L.E.D.’ Technology for TeamLab is a tool, but it is not the inherent message.”

In an interview with Takashi Kudo, Global Brand Director, he explained, “TeamLab aims to explore a new relationship between humanity and nature through art. Digital technology enables us to liberate art from the physical and transcend boundaries. We see no distinction between ourselves and nature; we are interconnected, existing in a long, fragile, yet miraculous continuity of life.”

The teamLab digital museums are immersive, interactive art experiences created by the international art collective. One is also being built in Hamburg, Germany, devoted solely to digital art, and it is planned to open this year. Some of TeamLab's exhibitions have come to the U.S. Their signature concept is art that is immersive and borderless, not confined by a frame of any sort. In the words of digitalartmuseum.com, “Artworks move out of rooms, communicate with other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle without boundaries.”

As we get older, it is difficult to even conceptualize this new field, and I am sure this will take a while to catch on and be accepted as a legitimate art form. Personally, I find it very exciting. When more than a few museums are devoted to the subject, we will begin to discern the good, better, and best of the work presented.

Two Museums Join Forces

If you live in New York or have an interest in the art world, you are almost sure to have heard about the merger agreement between the Metropolitan Museum and The Neue Galerie. The Neue Galerie will remain in its present location but under the auspices of the Met as of 2028. The story of how such things come about often seems obvious in hindsight, but rarely is at the time. Although the Met is world-renowned, not everybody knows about The Neue Galerie. The latter is a gem of a museum that specializes in German and Austrian art of the early 20th century. Its star attraction is Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, better known as the Woman in Gold.

The Neue Galerie is going to celebrate its 25th anniversary later this year when it reopens after renovations over the summer. It was founded by an unusual duo. Ronald Lauder, son of Estée Lauder, who founded the eponymous cosmetics firm, and a Viennese art dealer by the name of Serge Sabarsky. The Sabarsky gallery was located on the street level of Madison Avenue at 77th Street. Ronald walked by often and fell in love with the art that Sabarsky displayed in the window and along the gallery walls. Ronald’s daughter, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, tells the story best in an article in Vogue magazine. “When I was little, my father used to walk me to Serge’s gallery. He would say to my mother, ‘I’m going to take Aerin to the park,’ and we would go to the park and then end up at Serge’s for hours and hours. I would color while they were discussing their dream of having a museum of Austrian and German art”. (Image Serge Caption: Serge Sabarsky and Ronald Lauder)

Serge Sabarsky and Ronald Lauder

Aerin went on to explain that Ronald not only has known the director of the Met, Max Hollein, for many years, but also was friendly with Max’s father. In fact, the Vienna-born Met Director has been a trustee of the Neue Galerie for the past 20 years.

Ronald S. Lauder, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Max Hollein, & Renée Price

In the interest of total transparency, I was personally friendly with Serge, and Ronald was an important client of our gallery, Rosenberg & Stiebel, as well as a friend. Serge confirmed to me his ambition to create a museum of art in his field. Most friends pull out photos of their children when they see you, but in Serge’s case, he always showed me photos of the buildings he and Ronald were looking at as possibilities for their dream. In the end, it came to be the William Starr Miller mansion at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue, an ideal location on Museum Mile.

On the announcement of the merger, Ronald stated in a letter emailed to the members of The Neue Galerie, “None of this would have been possible without the dedication of Renée Price, the Neue Galerie’s founding and longtime director. I first met Renée in the 1970’s when she was gallery director for Serge Sabarsky”. The three of them made quite a team, but sadly, Serge died before the opening of the Museum. Ronald, however, did the most wonderful and appropriate thing in naming the restaurant on the Museum’s ground floor, The Café Sabarsky. It is more than a Café because it is a serious restaurant, but it has the aura of a typical Viennese Café as well as the food you would expect to find there. My favorites are the Weisswurst and the Sacher torte. Nowhere else in this country can you find this sausage or cake as good as in Austria or Germany. The reason I believe it is so appropriate is that Serge loved telling stories, and I can visualize him sitting in a corner of his café telling stories to all who would listen.

I will end with one of his favorite jokes. The waiter brings him the soup he has ordered, and before the waiter can put it down, he says, “It’s not hot enough. Take it back.” A few minutes later, the waiter returns with the soup. Without hesitation, the patron repeats, “It’s not hot enough. Take it back”. After this happens a couple of more times the waiter, by now quite annoyed, says “You don’t look up. You don’t try the soup. How can you know it is not hot enough and when do you think it will be hot enough?” He replies, “When you have to carry the soup on a saucer and a tray instead of with you thumb in the bowl”.

Art Museums as Architecture

Museums used to be in actual palaces, and if none were available, buildings were constructed to look like palaces. Why palaces? Well, to paraphrase the notorious bank robber, Willie Sutton, that is where the art is, gathered to show the wealth, power, and culture of the owner.

The Louvre is a converted palace. Originally built in 1190 as a fort, in the 14th century Charles V turned it into the royal residence, and so it remained for the French kings until 1682. Accommodations were made to show parts of the Royal collection, and selected artists were allowed to live and have their studios there. Finally, in 1793, it became a museum open to the public. In 1989, wanting to keep up with the times, the French government had the world-renowned architect, I. M. Pei created a new entrance in the center of the courtyard in the form of the now-famed glass pyramid.

Catherine the Great introduced art to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in 1764 to house 225 paintings she purchased from the Berlin merchant, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852 by Emperor Nicholas I, who added a New Hermitage building specifically to house the collection as a museum.

In this country, we have no kings, but we do have venerable buildings that demonstrate our culture. The oldest museum in the United States dates from 1773 and is in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded by the Charleston Library Society, it was modeled on the British Museum, initially with zoological and anthropological objects, and expanding to works relating to local history.

From the 19th through the mid-20th century, museum buildings were constructed in the neoclassical style recalling Greek and Roman temples. They were to represent authority, respect, and cultural reverence for their contents. A prime example is the Berlin National Gallery, completed in 1830, and it was built on Berlin’s Museum Island. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was designed by the multi-disciplinary artist and visionary, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

In the U.S., business moguls of the Gilded Age bought what they deemed the best art from Europe for their baronial style mansions. In 1882, Henry Clay Frick built Clayton in Pittsburgh, where his family lived until 1905, when they moved to the New York mansion he constructed with the aim of making his art collection public. They did not give Clayton up since Frick’s business and coke and steel empire was registered in Pittsburgh. In 1970, Frick’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick, moved back and opened Clayton as a museum for her personal collection that included early Renaissance Sienese painting and 18th-century French works of art.

All these museum buildings conveyed the importance of art and science, but in a manner intimidating to the general audience. Increasingly in need of public support, institutions no longer look to the past but rather hire the day’s star architects to create original destination buildings that will lure a public curious as to what they hold inside.

Near the end of last year, the Grand Egyptian Museum was opened near the Giza Pyramids. It has been described as the world’s largest archeological complex dedicated to a single civilization. The inauguration of the monumental building brought heads of state leading delegations from 79 countries to pay homage to the greatness of a culture, not in a palace of former rulers, but in a purpose-built statement of grandiose proportions.

In China, they are ready to open a museum reinterpreting traditional Suzhou architecture. It is the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art. It was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, with an international practice whose home office is in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Time marches on, and what the art of the future will look like or the structures in which it, along with earlier collections, will be placed, is still to be seen.

Interviewing the Artists

As you know, I love and collect quotes, so I imagined myself asking artists questions that I was curious about.

How do you think about your subjects?

Gilbert Stuart lamented, "What a business this of a portrait painter - you bring him a potato and expect he will paint you a peach.” Marcel Duchamp was more introspective: “Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.”

What do you wish to accomplish through your art?

Salvador Dali believed that "A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others." In order to accomplish that, Piet Mondrian responds, "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."

When do you feel that your artwork is complete?

Leonardo answered, “Art is never finished, only abandoned”. Rembrandt, however, knowing he had quite the ego, said, “A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.” Again, I think Duchamp had the best answer, “Art is completed by the viewer”.

Who do you believe qualifies as an artist?

Picasso famously replied, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Textile artist and teacher Tien Chiu tells his students, “You cannot aspire to be an artist, because you already are one.”

Is it hard to be an artist?

“Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do,” Degas answered. Michelangelo concurred, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

Why do you create art?

Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky believes "The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect..." Frida Kahlo says more simply, “I paint Flowers so they will not die”.

How do you define art?

El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor, answered, "Art is a reflection on life. Life isn't something we can cut and fix. It's always in a state of flux." Degas responds

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see”. Edward Hopper thinks for a moment and then replies, “If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”

How do you accomplish what you wish to do?

Georgia O’Keeffe said, "I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it." Banksy believes, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.Balthus concurred, “Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.” Author Fredrik Backman instructs, "Don't paint the way things look, paint the way they feel".

One last question ... do you listen to the critics?

Composer Jean Sibelius answered simply, “Pay no attention to what the critics say ... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!" Jean-Michel Basquiat summed it up, "I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is".