At a time when the words “legend” and “icon” are bandied around willy-nilly, it is hard to express the brilliance of David Hockney without missing the mark somewhat. Perhaps the fact that he was voted Britain’s most influential artist of all time in a 2011 poll comes close. But this 77-year-old, Bradford-born, California and Yorkshire-dwelling, seven-day-week working man resists definition: photographer, painter, printmaker, set designer – he’s done it all.
When Hockney emerged in the public eye as a young, outspoken, working-class artist in the early 1960s, he’d just graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, where the decision not to award him a diploma was overturned when he drew himself a satirical fake certificate and submitted it in protest. This was a sign of things to come: when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, he was openly gay; when he was selected for a knighthood in 1990, he turned it down, and as laws on smoking become tighter by the day, he is ardently pro-tobacco. A goody two-shoes he ain’t.
A contemporary of Peter Blake, the charismatic Hockney was at the forefront of pop art in the UK and was Britain’s answer to Andy Warhol, painting packets of Typhoo Tea (“my mother’s favourite”) while still a student. From a young man depicting gay love in 1960s America, to a septuagenarian iPad-painting pioneer in the 2010s, Hockney’s constantly evolving and unpredictable creative output has offered an optimistic view of the world that, at times, has seemed incongruous with his life. From losing friends to Aids in the 1980s to the more recent death of his 23-year-old assistant, this man is no stranger to turbulence; his first memory is of a bomb falling on his street during the second world war.
A new feature-length documentary directed by Randall Wright, Hockney, released on 28 November, will uncover a more personal side of the artist’s life – interviews with close friends and the man himself are cut with previously unseen footage and photos from his own archive. Tim Lewis will be interviewing Hockney for the Observer New Review and the questions he asks him will be up to you. Silly or serious, we want them all: where’s his favourite place in Yorkshire? Whom does he consider his artistic peers? What kind of cigarettes does he smoke? What was Warhol like?
Post your questions by 4pm on Tuesday 28 October either below the line,by tweeting @ObsNewReview or emailing review@observer.co.uk
