L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
by Emma Gray


"David Hockney Portraits," the show of some 160 paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and more that opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 11-Sept. 4, 2006, is a homecoming of sorts for the celebrated British expat who reveled in California’s famous light as well as its special poolside lifestyle. The show, which originated in London and premiered in this country at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is curiously conventional in its focus on portraiture. As it happens, the show illustrates the forceful role that biography plays in contemporary art.

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