David Hockney: Portraits in Print" at the National Gallery of Australia

"Faces are the most interesting things we see," states David Hockney, whose portraiture production over nearly 30 years is the focus of this exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, which brings together more than 50 works from the museum's collection — the largest collection of the British artist's works in Australia. Traveling through Los Angeles, Paris, and London in the 1970s and 80s, "Portraits in Print" follows how Hockney documented his closest relationships, repeatedly returning to models such as fashion designer Celia Birtwell and his muse Gregory Evans — sometimes in naturalistic forms, sometimes in a fragmented, neo-cubist style, a decade later. The exhibition reveals how portraiture served as both a conceptual basis and an aesthetic anchor in the artist's work, inspiring some of his most resolved compositions and, at the same time, serving as a space to expand his visual and technical interests — Hockney particularly valued drawing as a way to capture his models, and found lithography and etching to be fluid mediums for his confident line. The museum's collection also reflects the artist's long-standing collaboration with Kenneth E. Tyler's print workshop, a central aspect of his career. Note: some works in the exhibition depict male nudity.