Hide/Seek: “We Two Boys Together Clinging“ by David Hockney

Discussion by David C. Ward, co-curator of “Hide/Seek“ and Historian at the National Portrait Gallery. Even though homosexuality was illegal in England until 1967, David Hockney presented his homosexuality directly, as integral to his art. While his paintings from the early 1960s did use coded references-to lovers and other gay references-the overriding avowal of male desire made these paintings a commentary on England’s proscriptions. And Hockney openly stated his intent to propagandize “for something t