© @xavier.bettel/ Instagram
Appreciating art comes in many different forms, including, as shown by Luxembourg's Prime Minister, trying to recreate particular paintings.
Artist David Hockney is considered one of Britain's most influential artists of the twentieth century, having become known for his contributions to pop art in the 1960s. Hockney has since branched out to printmaking, stage designing, and photography, but throughout his career, the artist continued to return to portraiture, specifically of friends and relatives.
On a visit to Hamburg, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and his husband Gauthier Destenay visited the Bucerius Kunst Forum, where the two were unable to resist recreating Hockney's My Parents, a painting dating from 1977. The portrait demonstrates Hockney's shift in focusing on human behaviour in his art.
My Parents and other Hockney works are on loan from the Tate Britain as part of ongoing exhibition 'David Hockney. Works from the Tate collection' at the Bucerius Kunst Forum, which runs from 1 February to 10 May 2020.
The Prime Minister posted the recreated image to his Instagram account, managing to recreate the painting almost perfectly, with only one thing missing as a comment showed. Whilst Bettel certainly has Hockney's father's pose down to a tee, he's missing a crucial prop - the book Hockney's father is seen reading.
