Do remember they can’t cancel the Spring

Spring is a feeling before it is a season. It’s the slow return of light, the way blossoms defy the chill, the reminder – always – that rebirth is not a choice, but a certainty. And this year, as Paris thaws into bloom, so too will the Fondation Louis Vuitton, surrendered entirely to the boundless, technicolor world of David Hockney.

Titled with defiance and joy – Do remember they can’t cancel the Spring – this exhibition, opening April 9 and running through August 31, 2025, is not just a retrospective. It’s a full-scale immersion into the mind and imagination of one of the most influential living artists, spanning seven decades, 400 works, and nearly every medium conceivable.

Hockney, now 87, has never stopped reinventing the act of looking. From the quiet poignancy of Portrait of My Father (1955) to the sun-drenched seduction of A Bigger Splash (1967), from the intimacy of double portraits to the digital swipes of iPhone drawings – his oeuvre is a constant conversation between time, place, and perception.

“This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – 11 rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the very last paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.” 

Every element of the exhibition from the selection of works to the layout of each room has been orchestrated in direct collaboration with Hockney himself, alongside his longtime studio manager Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima and assistant Jonathan Wilkinson. This isn’t just a curated show; it’s a masterfully constructed narrative, authored by the artist.

 The journey begins at pond level, in the murmur of memory: works from the 1950s to the 1970s, charting Hockney’s transatlantic gaze – from Bradford to London to California. The pools shimmer, the men pose, and the painter’s eye remains ever-curious, ever-human. Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) – they're all here, reminding us of Hockney’s gift for capturing relationships, both tender and enigmatic.

But it is nature – quiet, unruly, impossible to ignore, that rises to dominate the show. From the wild expanse of A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998) to the Yorkshire hedgerows in bloom, Hockney’s landscapes from the last 25 years pulse with urgency and grace. In Normandy, the seasons become epic. His hawthorn bush (May Blossom on the Roman Road, 2009) is a riot of pinks and greens, a chromatic ode to spring’s arrival. Nearby, Bigger Trees near Warter (2007), on loan from Tate, stretches across the room like a cathedral, its brushwork both monumental and reverent.

And still, there are surprises: iPad sketches filled with wit and warmth, immersive video installations that fold time, space, and memory into moving tapestries. Here, Hockney doesn’t simply depict the world, he reimagines how we experience it. 

What emerges is not nostalgia, but persistence. A belief in the power of looking closely, of noticing what endures. Hockney’s spring is not only seasonal, it’s spiritual. A quiet resistance. A luminous affirmation. Because no matter what the world tries to cancel, spring will always find its way back. Just like art. Just like Hockney.