A new exhibition at Tate Britain is prompting a reassessment of David Hockney’s early work, situating his depictions of gay intimacy within the context of a legal system that criminalised homosexuality until 1967. Curators argue that Hockney’s paintings from the 1960s, including ‘A Bigger Picture’ and ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’, were not merely aesthetic experiments but coded acts of resistance.
Hockney, now 87, has long been celebrated for his vibrant landscapes and portraits. However, his early output, produced while homosexuality was still illegal in England and Wales, has often been interpreted through a purely formalist lens. The exhibition, titled ‘Hockney’s Closet: The Art of Illegality’, presents these works as a deliberate visual project to create what one curator described as a ‘peaceful, gay paradise’ on canvas.
The show draws on recently uncovered correspondence between Hockney and his contemporaries, as well as police records from the period. In one letter from 1963, Hockney writes of his frustration with the ‘constant fear’ of prosecution. His paintings from this era, which frequently depict male couples in domestic settings or rural landscapes, appear to offer an alternative reality: one of unapologetic tenderness and domesticity.
Scholars note that Hockney’s use of bright, idyllic colours and flattened perspective effectively neutralised the political threat of his subject matter. ‘By presenting gay love as naturally beautiful, he denied the law any foothold in the moral register of art,’ said Dr. Eleanor Shaw, a lecturer in Queer Studies at the University of Cambridge. ‘He did not fight the law directly. He simply refused to inhabit its worldview.’
The reassessment comes amid a broader revaluation of British art history, with institutions acknowledging the extent to which homosexuality was systematically erased from the artistic record. The Tate has pledged to dedicate further resources to recovering the work of artists who lived under the shadow of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the law that criminalised ‘gross indecency’ between men.
Hockney’s own response to the exhibition has been characteristically opaque. In a rare statement released through his studio, he called the show ‘interesting’ but did not directly engage with its central thesis. Those close to him report that he remains reluctant to be defined by his sexuality, preferring to let the work speak.
Nevertheless, the exhibition has already had an effect on the art market. Prices for Hockney’s early works have risen sharply, with collectors now viewing them as both aesthetic milestones and historical artefacts. ‘There is a hunger for art that tells stories that were deliberately silenced,’ said Marcus Bellamy, a London-based dealer. ‘Hockney’s paintings from this period are now seen as documents of a forbidden world.’
The show runs at Tate Britain until September. It includes loaned works from private collections and the Hockney Foundation, as well as archival material never before displayed.
