His show became the most visited exhibition of a living painter in the history of the Tate.
But the curator of David Hockney’s exhibition has claimed the artist is not a ‘highly skilled’ painter.
Discussing Hockney’s work, Chris Stephens, head of displays at the modern art museum, said: ‘I don’t think he’s a terribly, you know highly skilled, craftsmen when it comes to painting. I mean he is one of the most brilliant draftsmen of all time probably, but the painting is less accomplished.’
Hockney at 80, which was ran at the Tate Britain from February to May this year, attracted 463,087 visitors and became the most visited exhibition for a living artist ever held at any of Tate’s four galleries.
David Hockney’s painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), dated 1971
In the gallery’s entire history, the show was only topped by an exhibition of the late Henri Matisse in 2014.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Stephens added that some of later works could have used a bit more work.
He said: ‘There’s a distinction in the more recent work which are always more quickly than the earlier work.’
Last year, Hockney, 80, displayed a series of portraits from 2013 to 2016 at the Royal Academy.
But Stephens said: ‘The landscapes seem much stronger than the portraits. There was a show of his portraits recently at the Royal Academy, I think last year, and he made a thing of it that they were all done, the sitter sat in the same chair, and they all took three days.
Artist David Hockney
‘There were a few – maybe more than a few – where you thought another day might not be a bad idea.
‘I think those earlier portraits which were more considered compositionally…’
Hockney, who is from Bradford, suffered a stroke in 2012. It affected his speech but he was still able to draw.
When asked if the stroke had affected his art, Stephens said: ‘There is a sort of lack of finish in his painting, but I don’t know if that’s to do with the stroke or not or whether that’s just a willful decision.’
And Bruno Wollheim, who had access to Hockney when he filmed and directed a documentaries about him, said the late Lucian Freud was ‘scathing’ about his work. ‘I had a very scared breakfast with Lucian Freud and I sort of asked him what he thought about David’s work and he was really quite scathing, I thought in a way that was quite interesting’, he said.
‘I mean Lucian would turn up to every exhibition and vice versa. I think basically Lucian’s view was while the sex in David’s painting was hot, the pictures were great.
‘As soon as that disappeared as a subject, it no longer interested him so much. So that was his sort of take, which I haven’t told David about.’