I wrote this essay over the summer, while David Hockney 25 was on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (9 April–31 August 2025).

With the recent passing of Frank Gehry (28 February 1929–5 December 2025), the architect of the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, I thought it might be of interest. Gehry’s buildings have long fascinated me, and his friendship with Hockney was quite important and suggested through a portrait included in the retrospective.

David Hockney 25

What does it mean to belong when your life is woven through many places? This question stayed with me as I visited David Hockney 25 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. In February 2020, after twenty-five years in California, my life was upended when my green card application was denied. The reason? I had not won an international prize. Neither my memberships at the Los Angeles Press Club and the International Association of Art Critics, nor the fact that I interviewed Holocaust survivor and painter Kalman Aron for Public Access TV, nor that I helped a German film crew with their comedy documentary by introducing them to composer William Goldstein and filmmaker Henry Jaglom, counted. Nor did it matter that I appeared in the film myself or that I opened my home to the crew for filming. My work as a research assistant to the Berlin Prize Fellows was ignored as well. It did not matter that one of them, civil rights lawyer Michael Meltsner, had helped boxer Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay, return to boxing, or that I did the research for composer Betsy Jolas, daughter of Maria Jolas and Eugène Jolas, founders of the Paris literary journal transition, which published sections of James Joyce’s Work in Progress, later known as Finnegans Wake. I was not born into these circles. I had to work my way up, starting with degrees at Santa Monica College, studying at UCLA, and earning a Master’s degree, to be allowed to participate in this intellectual circle. All of this did not matter.

During my exile in France, I found comfort in Hockney’s work, which challenges both art-making and ways of life. Like me, he first left his hometown, then Berlin, and sought a life of true freedom in California.

On a May morning, after walking through woods and hearing the soft murmur of a nearby stream, the upper contours of the Louis Vuitton Foundation emerged. I thought no setting could be more fitting for Hockney’s art.

Frank Gehry’s masterpiece, reminiscent of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, nestles in the Bois de Boulogne. It creates a striking dialogue between nature and modernity, much like Hockney’s work, which bridges the natural world with technology, including iPads and iPhones. Gehry’s friendship with Hockney is subtly honored through a portrait of the architect titled Frank Gehry, 24th, 25th February 2016. Its turquoise and marine blue background evokes the luminous spirit of the Côte d’Azur, where Hockney spent time.

Near the entrance, two contrasting landscapes greeted me: a swimming pool and Nichols Canyon, beside pear and hawthorn trees from Yorkshire and Normandy. Together, they reflect a life stretched across continents. This theme feels urgent amid global migration caused by the climate crisis and social upheaval.

The retrospective spans four hundred works, curated by Suzanne Pagé and Norman Rosenthal, with Hockney’s guidance. It unfolds like a........

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