David Hockney depicted a 'peaceful, gay paradise' when homosexuality was a crime

[Duncan Grant]

David Hockney depicted a 'peaceful, gay paradise' when homosexuality was a crime

One of David Hockney's early paintings depicts a couple wrapped in an embrace. Painted in 1961, this picture may sound like it captures a relatively traditional romantic scene. But at the time, it was a radical piece of work. That is because the couple in the painting are both men, and in 1961 it was still illegal to be gay in the UK.

Hockney, who has died aged 88, painted We Two Boys Together Clinging as a second-year student at the Royal College of Art. Homosexuality was only partially decriminalised some six years later, in 1967, when the law changed to allow sex between two men "in private", so long as they were both over the age of 21.

The 1961 painting, inspired by a Walt Whitman poem of the same name, was an early statement of intent by an artist who would go on to become a defining figure of British – and LGBT+ – culture. Over the next decade, Hockney continued to break social taboos by celebrating same-sex relationships in his art - often by depicting the quiet, everyday moments of gay domestic life.

David Hockney and Derek Boshier at the Royal College of Art, in front of Hockney’s We Two Boys Together Clinging 1961, photographed 1962
Photo © Geoffrey Reeve

[Munu]

1. A peaceful gay paradise?

I like it but I'm not seeing a "peaceful gay paradise".

Does that make me an uncultured slob?

[Duncan Grant]

2. That would be his California paintings.

From the article. Hope this helps:

Hockney's style changed radically a few years later, after he travelled to California for the first time in 1964. There he painted his famous swimming pool pictures…

"Those works are so queer, so sensual and sexy and playful and joyous," Bilton says, adding they also show the "domesticity" and "dull aspects of gay relationships".

Hockney was "normalising same-sex relationships... that we take for granted", Bilton suggests, adding the artist showed that gay people "are just normal people... doing normal stuff, looking at our partners and thinking: 'oh, you're beautiful'".

And if anyone would like to take a deeper dive, there’s this:

David Hockney’s California (1965): ‘it was all so sexy’
Not only did Los Angeles offer the artist endless sunshine and untapped subject matter when he flew in from Britain almost 60 years ago — it also presented him with an erotic freedom that had been forbidden in his native land

[Munu]

3. Thanks for that link. That's more like it. n/t