E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

David Hockney - who I long dismissed as a graphic designer slash hedonist with a line in pools and big glasses - has grown into his 70s as a grand old man of painting.  His vast new exhibition in London is movingly brilliant. It confirms him as a genius, as, room by room, the sheer scale of his old-age vision blooms into visually splendid life.  Hockney has become an expert on seeing things with an eye unjaded by the camera, a master of perspective and its lack, and someone who, like Hardy , notices things.  His unabashed rural East Yorkshire empiricism is, to me at least, the best thing to happen in the arts in Britain in decades - it is so fresh, naturalistic, simple, and yet profoundly engaged, with the seasons, with time, with trees - one could hardly ask for a more universal theme.  Hockney, a superb draughtsman, is able to render thistles, twigs, leaves, grass, and shoots, as well as fields and hedges, lanes and blossoming or bare bows, with aplomb, flair, ...