Leaving their mark
In many ways, David Hockney is a quintessential Angeleno, someone who arrived from another country and made this place his own. An English painter born in the industrial northern city of Bradford, he is most renowned for his paintings of light and swimming pools; an accomplished draftsman, he has deliberately used broad shapes and color palettes, as well as collages composed of hundreds of Polaroids, to comment on the glittery veneer of California life.
Much of Hockney’s art is deceptively simple, almost childlike in its execution, yet emotionally nuanced and complex. Neither a realist nor an experimentalist, he occupies a middle territory, particularly in his portraits, which often convey a longing or a tension just below the surface of the painting, representing something the subject might prefer us not to see. Likewise his California images, which although still are far from quiet, as if evoking the moment before or after something important has occurred.
Much of Hockney’s art is deceptively simple, almost childlike in its execution, yet emotionally nuanced and complex. Neither a realist nor an experimentalist, he occupies a middle territory, particularly in his portraits, which often convey a longing or a tension just below the surface of the painting, representing something the subject might prefer us not to see. Likewise his California images, which although still are far from quiet, as if evoking the moment before or after something important has occurred.
Los Angeles is commonly regarded as a city people come to, but theres much more to it than that. For better than a century, its also been a place that people come from even when (as so often happens) they were born somewhere else. Indeed, L.A. is synonymous with personality, whether frivolous or tragic or profound. Here, we celebrate 10 Angelenos who, by dint of either action or circumstance, helped change the way we understand the world.