An oyster without grit
DAVID HOCKNEY IS NOW 83 years old and has been famous for fully 60 of those years. Since he appeared in the “Young Contemporaries” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1961,while still a student at the Royal College of Art, celebrity and accolades are pretty much all he’s known. That exhibition launched the careers of other student artists too, such as Allen Jones and RB Kitaj, but it catapulted Hockney’s the highest.
The show brought him a dealer — another 1960s bright young thing, John Kasmin — and shortly afterwards a new appearance when the suddenly flush Bradford boy visited America and dyed his hair blond after seeing a Clairol advertisement. On his return he was magazine and his signature look became even better known than his paintings. So quickly did he become embedded in the scene that by 1972 he appeared on Desert Island .
