Celebrated British artist David Hockney dies at 88

**Valerie Sanderson** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and at 1500hrs GMT on Friday the 12th of June, these are our main stories. One of the world's best known and loved contemporary artists, David Hockney, has died at the age of 88 SpaceX is making its stock market debut in New York, setting Elon Musk on course to be the world's first trillionaire. Iran says major parts of an agreement to end the war with the US have almost been finalized after President Trump claimed a deal was ready to be signed.
Also in this podcast, the UN agency Tasked with Countering Aids says its work has been put in peril by a dramatic decrease in drugs and testing caused by global funding cuts. And the number of Palestinians forced from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem is on the rise.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:56)
They destroyed the future and everything else.

**Sebastian Usher** (0:59)
We spent our whole lives building this house.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:02)
They brought us back to zero again, me and my children.

**Valerie Sanderson** (1:10)
One of the world's best known and loved contemporary artists, David Hockney has died at the age of 88
David Hockney was born in Yorkshire in Northern England. In his 20s, he moved to the United States and spent large parts of his life in California, where the culture and landscape fascinated him. His work is characterized by vibrant colors, as shown in his famous swimming pool paintings, such as A Bigger Splash. Vincent Doud looks back on the life of one of art's great showmen.

**Vincent Dowd** (1:40)
David Hockney was known in the art world before he was 30, but the general public soon grew to know the name too.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:48)
Seven years ago, David Hockney won a scholarship from Bradford to the Royal College of Art in London. Now he has paintings in museums and private collections all over the world.

**Vincent Dowd** (1:57)
Hockney had a genius for publicity.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:00)
Hockney's always been irreverent about the British art establishment. He was something of an intruder on the smart Bond Street art scene. Ever since he appeared at his first one-man show in a gold lame suit, Hockney's dyed hair, his boyfriends and his sheer popularity have made more headlines than his talent.

**Vincent Dowd** (2:19)
But from the beginning, David Hockney was also dedicated to his art. He left the Royal College of Art in London, where he'd won a gold medal in 1962

**David Hockney** (2:29)
On these etchings, I have to have it out on the balcony because there's awful fumes when you put in the plate. So I just close the window to keep them out and let them blow away into Powys Terrace.

**Vincent Dowd** (2:42)
It was Bohemian life in Powys Terrace, Notting Hill, which later helped make Hockney a star in the film documentary of 1974

**SPEAKER_9** (2:51)
A bigger splash.
David Hockney, painter, comic, genius, star of Swinging London of the 60s. Why do the glamour go stale?

**Vincent Dowd** (3:03)
Hockney let the camera in on his complex friendships and on the aftermath of his first big relationship with the American Peter Schlesinger. Hockney was open and likable.

**David Hockney** (3:14)
I think it's not as good. My art is not as good as some people think. It's not as bad as some people think as well, but I assume we'll get better. I assume the best work is yet to come.

**Vincent Dowd** (3:29)
He'd moved to America the first time in the mid-60s. It was California which defined him. Blue skies, shimmering pools and the handsome young men he adored. And he developed his own look. Big round glasses and hair dyed blonde.

**David Hockney** (3:44)
I was watching television slightly drunk and an ad came on saying blondes have more fun. I went out that very moment at one o'clock in the morning, which we can do in New York, and go and buy the stuff and I shoved it on my head and it only takes an hour.

**Vincent Dowd** (3:59)
In an era when most gay men were guarded about their private lives, David Hockney was resolutely out. And it was in California he felt most free.

**David Hockney** (4:09)
When I'd been painting very quite intensely for a few days and I'm always in the studio and I suddenly, I just want to go out and you don't walk here. I get in the car and within half an hour from that house, you'd be 5,000 feet in the San Gabriel mountains. It gives you a solar lift.

**Vincent Dowd** (4:28)
His essential talent was for drawing, but he was also intellectually fascinated by what a Polaroid camera could do or a photocopier.