Spring Cannot Be Cancelled

On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay.

So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire.