Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look opens at The National Gallery in London August 8, featuring two Hockney paintings, one showing his mother and father and the other depicting his friend, curator Henry Geldzahler. Hockney’s works are displayed with the thread that ties them together, Piero della Francesca’s ‘The Baptism of Christ’.
This focused exhibition will explore the figurative painter David Hockney’s lifelong association with the National Gallery and passionate interest in its collection in general and with the 15th-century Italian painter Piero della Francesca (1415/20–1492). The exhibition encourages visitors to draw comparisons between the 15th-century painting by Piero and Hockney, and to promote ‘slow looking’, an activity that, in Hockney’s opinion, is vital in letting people rediscover just how beautiful the world around them is.