David Hockney reflects on life and art while experiencing confinement in rural Normandy.

On his eightieth birthday, David Hockney first sought rustic tranquillity: a place to watch the sun set and the seasons change, a refuge from the madness of the world. So when the Covid-19 pandemic and confinement came, his life at La Grande Cour - a centuries-old Norman farmhouse where he had set up his studio a year earlier - was scarcely affected. In fact, he enjoyed this enforced isolation as an opportunity to devote himself even more deeply to his art.

Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an inspiring manifesto that reaffirms the power of art to distract and uplift the spirit. Based on a series of conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator, the book presents a selection of new, previously unpublished drawings and paintings by the artist, made on iPads in Normandy, alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel and other masters.

Throughout these pages, we see how Hockney moves forward with infectious enthusiasm and an inexhaustible sense of wonder. Contrary to convention, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, but remains indifferent to critical opinion and even history. His world revolves around his four acres in northern France and the subjects that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees.

Hockney has much to teach us, not only about how to look... but about how to live.

Publisher: Thames and Hudson