David Hockney, Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long

Entitled ‘Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long’, the video work by one of the world’s most celebrated living artists, David Hockney, was unveiled across a network of the world’s most iconic outdoor video screens in New York’s Times Square, Seoul, Tokyo, Los Angeles and the home of CIRCA — the Piccadilly Lights screen in London.

In this worldwide display of unity, Hockney’s animated sunrise sought to offer a symbol of hope and collaboration as the world awoke from its lockdowns. Members of the public across these four cities were able to see the commonplace advertisements paused and replaced for a spontaneous encounter with Hockney’s meditation on the arrival of spring.

Created on the artist’s iPad in Normandy, France, this global happening coincided with the release of Hockney’s book Spring Cannot Be Cancelled and his Royal Academy exhibition The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020.

David Hockney became known as a central figure of British Pop Art in the 1960’s and continues to be widely celebrated as one of the most influential living artists of our time.

Born in Bradford in 1937, he graduated from the Bradford School of Art in 1958 and studied at the Royal College of Art from 1959–62. Alongside his prodigious painting and drawing practice, he has constantly explored new technological possibilities in making art. In the 1980’s he embraced Polaroid film, photocopying and faxing and, more recently, digital media including photoshop and his iPad and iPhone as new means of conceiving and creating mesmerising multiple view and composite images. Now in his eighties, Hockney continues to create new works in all media with his unwavering desire to continually challenge conventions of perspective in art and how we truly ‘see’.