David Hockney Last Moments and Video-share on Memorial

Jun 13, 2026 | David Hockney Last Moments have become a major topic of discussion after a touching memorial event featured rare video footage, personal photographs, and unforgettable moments from the legendary artist’s remarkable career. Admirers, fellow artists, and long-time supporters gathered to celebrate the extraordinary life and creative legacy of David Hockney, one of the most influential figures in modern art history.

During the emotional tribute, visitors experienced never-before-seen studio recordings, archival footage, and reflections highlighting Hockney’s passion for creativity, innovation, and artistic expression. The memorial exhibition showcased iconic paintings, digital artworks, and personal memories that demonstrated how David Hockney transformed ordinary scenes into timeless masterpieces.

Many attendees described the final video presentation as the most powerful part of the event, offering a heartfelt look at David Hockney’s artistic journey and lasting influence on generations of creators around the world. From his early years to his ground-breaking digital experiments, the exhibition celebrated a life dedicated to imagination, color, and inspiration.

Watch this video for the latest updates on David Hockney Last Moments, the emotional memorial tribute, rare video footage, and the lasting legacy of one of the greatest artists of our time.

‘Suggestive Toothpaste Tubes Shooting into Mouths’: David Hockney’s Winking Celebration of Queer Life

THE GUARDIAN: He challenged homophobia not through sexualised imagery but by reshaping ideas of beauty, intimacy and desire. The result? From posters to cushion covers, A Bigger Splash has become an essential presence in countless gay households

Screenshot is from this Guardian op-ed. | Highly controversial at the time’ … Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool, 1966. Photograph: Richard Schmidt/David Hockney
Six decades after David Hockney painted A Bigger Splash, his most famous painting, reproductions have become a visual motif in gay domestic life. I’ve seen framed posters, prints and postcards of the work – which captures the moment after a person jumps off a diving board into an otherwise still cyan blue swimming pool – in countless gay households. In my flat, it appears on a cushion cover that I bought after seeing the real thing at Hockney’s 2017 Tate Britain retrospective.

It’s fitting that A Bigger Splash is now emblematic of this pioneer. As an out gay artist who depicted same-sex desire in his work long before male homosexuality was partly decriminalised in England and Wales, Hockney and his paintings challenged the homophobia within the artistic establishment and beyond. And he did so not through the use of highly sexualised imagery, like the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, or with the activist themes of painter Keith Haring, but by reshaping our ideas of beauty, intimacy and desire. That’s how he made the biggest splash.

In 1961, when a student at London’s Royal College of Art, Hockney painted one of the earliest expressions of queer identity in British art. We Two Boys Together Clinging is a childlike painting that shows two figures embracing – and perhaps kissing. The title, which is unavoidably written across the painting, stems from a poem by Walt Whitman that had long been embraced by gay readers for its characterisation of physical closeness and companionship between men. It’s a reference that only some viewers would understand, which was obscure enough to avoid censorship laws at the time. » | Louis Staples | Sunday, June 14, 2026

More on David Hockney here, here, here, and here.

‘He Outlived Four of His Doctors’: David Hockney’s Lfelong Love of Smoking – and the 2,000 Cigarettes He Kept At Home ‘for Emergencies’

THE GUARDIAN: His passion got him into scraps with the Paris Metro and numerous other bodies. Was it a social crutch? A Freudian response to his father? And why did he take such delight in writing to the Guardian about it all?

This screenshot is from this Guardian article. | He wore a badge saying: ‘End bossiness soon’ … Hockney smokes a cigarette as he campaigns at a Labour Party conference. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA
David Hockney’s last self-portrait that went on show while he lived, in 2025’s Paris retrospective, has a Droste effect: the figure holds a picture in which the figure holds a picture. Between the fingers of one hand, a paintbrush; of the other, a cigarette. He could have been smoking and smoking and smoking into infinity. That’s the elemental truth of the work, and even while that turned out not to be literally true – he died this week, aged 88 – he gave it his best shot.

The painting is titled Play within a Play within a Play and Me with a Cigarette, and it got him into a scrap with the authorities of the Paris Metro, who said a photo of it couldn’t be used to advertise the show, since it contravened regulations – it is a pretty common rule that you’re not allowed to glamorise smoking lest you influence the young. “The bossiness of those in charge of our lives knows no limits,” he said at the time. “Art has always been a path to free expression and this is a dismal [decision].”

Bossiness was his bête noir – he often wore a badge that said: “End bossiness soon.” Whether or not the work really did glamorise the habit is an open question since, although nattily dressed in houndstooth, Hockney didn’t exactly look in rude health.

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The smoking could have been an act of artistic self-fashioning, to join the ranks of other celebrated smokers – Picasso, Monet – to whom Hockney paid homage as fag forebears. But if you saw it as he did, you wouldn’t be looking for reasons. He smoked because he really loved smoking, and he did it all the time. » | Zoe Williams | Saturday, June 13, 2026

David Hockney – a life in pictures »

Peroxide mop, statement specs, tweed suits and quirky Crocs: David Hockney’s genius for fashion »

David Hockney: The ‘Quirky British Eccentric’ with a Twinkle in His Eye

Jun 12, 2026 | “He had a wonderful mischief, a twinkle in his eye.”

Giant of British art David Hockney has died at the age of 88. Times arts correspondent David Sanderson and his biographer and friend Christopher Simon Sykes look back at the life of the much-loved “quirky British eccentric”.



David Hockney, revolutionary British artist famed for his pools and portraits, dies aged 88: Bradford-born painter, who made his name with sunkissed visions of California and never stopped breaking barriers, going on to become one of contemporary art’s most important figures, has died »

More on David Hockney here.

Artist David Hockney Dies Aged 88 | BBC News

Jun 12, 2026 | David Hockney has died at the age of 88, his publicist said.

The British artist is one of the most influential of the modern era and was one of the leaders of the 1960s pop art movement.

In 2018, one of his swimming pool paintings sold for nearly £70 million at auction - a record for a living artist.


More on David Hockney here.

David Hockney, le peintre qui a mis l’art contemporain en couleurs, est mort à l’âge de 88 ans

Cette capture d'écran provient de cet article du Figaro. | David Hockney dans sa maison près de Lisieux en Normandie en juillet 2022 François BOUCHON / Le Figaro
LE FIGARO : Le peintre des piscines californiennes et des sous-bois du Yorkshire avait choisi de s’installer dans le calme normand en 2019. Il est mort jeudi 11 juin à l’âge de 88 ans chez lui à Londres.

Ce tout jeune homme à la cravate jaune, à l'écharpe rouge, au blazer turquoise, à la frange épaisse et brune, aux grosses lunettes qui s'ouvrent sur des yeux directs aux cils rougis, c'est David Hockney par lui-même en 1954, à 17 ans. Ce fascinant collage sur papier journal, qui ouvrait la rétrospective du grand peintre anglais au Centre Pompidou en 2017, est aujourd'hui au Musée de Bradford. C'est dans cette ville industrielle de l'ouest du Yorkshire qu'est né David Hockney, le quatrième d'une fratrie rapprochée de cinq enfants, dans une famille modeste. Peintre chéri des Anglais qui aiment sa vitalité, sa fraîcheur, sa palette éclatante, sa passion pour la nature bien verte et les bois en toutes saisons, David Hockney est mort jeudi 11 juin à l’âge de 88 ans chez lui à Londres.

Son père, Kenneth Hockney, aide-comptable, militant antitabac, est un homme introverti et plein de fantaisie, assez excentrique pour peindre des couchers de soleil sur les portes de la maison familiale vers 1950. Le tout jeune David souligne l'élégance neutre et surtout le « body langage » de son père, ses mains qui se tordent, dans un portrait en demi-teintes, le premier tableau qu'il vend (10 livres), à 20 ans, lors de l'exposition collective «Yorkshire Artists Exhibition », en 1957, à la Leeds Art Gallery. Il lui tenait à cœur puisque aujourd'hui il est dans The David Hockney Foundation. » | Par Valérie Duponchelle | vendredi 12 juin 2026

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David Hockney Turns 88. He’s Still Smoking, Painting, and Breaking Rules: Hockney has just opened his largest exhibition ever at Paris's Fondation Louis Vuitton. »

David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88: His colorful figurative paintings were both conservative and iconoclastic, defying the dominant abstract schools of the mid-20th century. »

With iPhones and Faxes, David Hockney Embraced Tech: Polaroids and photocopiers also gave the artist possibilities for creating in forms vastly different from his paintings. »

What I Learned From David Hockney: The curator Norman Rosenthal knew the artist for over 60 years and still discovered something new when they collaborated on a final blockbuster show. »

Smoking David Hockney Is a Truer Conservative than Killjoy Rishi Sunak

THE TELEGRAPH: Compulsory clean living isn’t what people vote Tory for. The party needs to rediscover the spirit of Churchill

If smoking has a bullish face, it is painter Sir David Hockney’s. From his farmstead in Normandy, the great man has surfaced to denounce Rishi Sunak’s proposal to ban the sale of cigarettes gradually. This, he says, “is just madness to me. I have smoked for 70 years. I started when I was 16 and I’m now 86 and I’m reasonably fine, thank you. I just love tobacco and I will go on smoking until I fall over.”

Here, I say, is the authentic Conservative spirit. This is a man who has taken on board the health warnings and decided to ignore them all. He has calculated the risks, set them against the benefits and decided that he’s going to carry on with smoking because he likes it and it helps him paint.

As he says defiantly, “Many artists have smoked. Picasso smoked and died at 91, Matisse smoked and died at 84 and Monet chain-smoked and died at 86. He smoked and painted at the same time. I can’t do that. I don’t smoke while I’m painting. I light a cigarette every 15 minutes when I stop to check what I’ve done … Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone?” » | Melanie McDonagh | Sunday, October 8, 2023

Artist David Hockney Slams Smoking Ban
YAHOO! NEWS: Artist David Hockney has said he loathes the Labour Government for interfering in his life by introducing the smoking ban.

The 72-year-old lifelong smoker is backing a cross-party group of MPs who want the ban to be relaxed, so people can light up in designated rooms in pubs.

Hockney told the BBC's Politics Show that he was appalled to find that his local cafe in east Yorkshire no longer allowed people to smoke at tables outside, because they were frightened that smoke would waft inside and breach the law.

He said Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair were responsible and added: "I loathe them for it."

Hockney also took a swipe at the Government's "nanny state attitude", saying that if ministers had told the late TV chef Keith Floyd to give up rich food, alcohol and cigarettes in order to live longer, "he would have said to them that's not what I call living. Up yours! >>> ITN | Sunday, September 20, 2009

David Hockney on Why He Will Always Be Devoted to Cigarettes
GUARDIAN UNLIMITED: On July 1 2007, the most grotesque piece of social engineering will begin in England: the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, imposed easily by a political and media elite. They think it will lead to healthier people and a cleaner atmosphere. They believe they can change people easily. The science of marketing has been absorbed by them and they think they can control everybody. I don't think they can. People will stay at home and do drugs instead - legal and illegal.

I have lived in California for a number of years. They started smoking bans, but they didn't affect smokers that much. In California you move around in your own private space. If one goes to a public space, say the opera or Disney Hall, then because the climate is ideal the smoker can just step outside, at all times of the year. Many restaurants have gardens and the bans have never really bothered me. But something else has happened in California since the bans came in, unreported by the media, and it took me a while to notice because I have spent the past seven years working in England.

The amount of drugs advertised on television tells me what has replaced tobacco (although 20% still smoke): painkillers, Prozac and antidepressants, mostly prescription drugs - you just tell the doctor what you need. When prescription drugs are advertised in the press there is always a lot of small print listing side effects, and on television you get a speedy talking voice listing the side effects. You perhaps hear one word in four - paralysis, diarrhoea, death, headaches. I expect it all to come here. Drugs (legal and illegal) are the world's largest business, and one can understand why, since they make us feel better. ’I smoke for my mental health’ (more)

Mark Alexander