Entertainment

Celebrated British contemporary artist David Hockney dies at 88

British artist David Hockney has died at 88, his publicist said on Friday. Hockney, one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, worked in a range of mediums but is best known…

British artist David Hockney, considered one of the most influential and defining figures in contemporary art whose paintings captured the world in brilliant colour, has died aged 88, his public relations agent announced Friday.
Describing Hockney as “one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries”, his publicist Erica Bolton said in a statement that he had “passed away peacefully at home” in London on Thursday, a month before his 89th birthday.
Read moreParis museum celebrates David Hockney with ‘biggest show of his career’
‘Here I felt free’
As a child growing up in gloomy northern England, David ⁠Hockney noticed the sharply defined shadows in the Hollywood films of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy.
“Strong shadows meant a lot of sun,” the painter recalled to BBC television in 2009. “So I thought, well, wherever that is, it’s always sunny.”
Two decades later, Hockney moved to Los Angeles to immerse himself in that dazzling light.
Initially, almost as much as his paintings, Hockney was known for his own image – thick-rimmed spectacles, peroxide hair, shiny gold jacket – which ‌became a symbol of Britain’s Swinging Sixties.
As an art student in the northern English city of Bradford – where he was born to an accountancy clerk father ⁠and a devout Methodist mother – Hockney rebelled against convention. He gave titles to his abstract paintings such as “Going to be a Queen for Tonight” and “Doll Boy” at a time when homosexuality was punishable by prison.
To continue his studies, in 1959 he moved to London where he had a meteoric ‌rise in the British pop art movement and rubbed shoulders with stars from dancer Rudolf Nureyev to Mick Jagger.
But Hockney yearned for the excitement he saw ⁠in the work of American artists. Using money from the sale of his art, he visited New York for the first time in 1961 – where he became a friend of Andy Warhol – and moved to California three years later.
“I thought people who produced such work must live in colour, so I went in search of it,” he is quoted as saying in a biography written by art critic and friend Peter Adam.
“I had spent the first 20 years of my life in the gothic gloom ‌of the North. Here I felt free.”
His pictures of swimming pools and naked men in showers became icons of a sun-drenched lifestyle that he documented with luminous acrylic paint before dividing his time between Los Angeles, London and Paris in the late 1960s and 1970s.
He remained unpretentious despite his success.
“I am actually still a student,” he told Adam. “I just happen to have quite a lot of credit cards in my pocket.”
In 1985, when ‌he was invited to the White House to dine with president Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, he was held up for half an hour by security officers because he was the only guest to arrive on foot, his biographer wrote.
‘You don’t retire doing this’
Hockney’s images of love, sex and material wealth led to claims by some art critics that his work was trivial. But he won greater renown than any other British artist of the 20th century.
One of his most famous paintings, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” – showing a figure swimming underwater and a man gazing into the pool – sold for $90.3 million in 2018, the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction at the time.
As he grew older and his life turned more domestic, dogs replaced men in Hockney’s work, at a time when many of his friends were dying of AIDS.
He said he cried for two days when Stanley, one of his beloved dachshunds, died in 2001, having been immortalised in scores of paintings and sketches.
In the late 1990s, Hockney began returning more frequently to visit his mother in the northern English county of Yorkshire, where he had grown up, and a terminally ill friend encouraged him to paint the local landscapes.
Feeling increasingly lonely, he moved from California to the seaside town of Bridlington on England’s North Sea coast. For a decade he painted clumps of bare trees in winter, fields full of ripe crops and tracks stretching towards the gentle rolling hills of the Yorkshire Wolds region.
It was the most productive period of his entire career as he rushed to capture scenes that, he said, changed more dramatically with the seasons than did those of California.
“You don’t retire doing this,” he told the BBC in his broad Yorkshire accent when asked about his unflagging energy. “You just do it until you fall over.”
The former enfant terrible of British art, a cigarette almost always in his hand, never stopped trying new ⁠techniques.
He used faxes to share his work and then iPads to produce it.
His Yorkshire paintings led to a stained-glass window for Westminster Abbey, in central London.
In 2018, Hockney bought a farmhouse in Normandy, in northern France, and turned his eye to ⁠the fields and flowers of his garden there. The 90-metre-long “A Year in Normandie” frieze was inspired by the nearly 1,000-year-old Bayeux Tapestry.
Hockney’s work ethic – instilled in him from getting up daily at 6 o’clock to work in hospitals for two years, when he refused to do his military service in the army – barely relented in his later years.
“I tend to think that you should work every day,” he said. “And I do.”
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Entertainment

Blake Lively to Have Legal Fees Paid for by Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer

Blake Lively will have her legal fees paid by Justin Baldoni but isn’t entitled to damages for harm caused by his defamation claims, a court found Friday.
Under the settlement reached last month, Baldoni waived his right to appeal the court’s order last year dismissing his $400 million lawsuit against Lively. The deal didn’t include monetary compensation but left open the door for the actress to recover her legal costs and pursue damages under a California law intended to shield sexual harassment victims from retaliatory defamation claims.
That law, the court said, “does not create an end run around the entire set of carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
“It instead establishes a narrow exception to the usual litigation process for a specific and limited kind of relief,” wrote U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in the ruling. “Compensatory and punitive damages do not fall within that exception.”
The order decides the last legal issue in the case after Lively and Baldoni reached an 11th-hour settlement to avert a headline-splashing trial over alleged sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us. Now, the court will asses how much in legal fees she should be paid, with her lawyers submitting a breakdown of their hourly rates and how long they worked on the case.
The bill could be sky-high considering the pedigree of lawyers Lively had on her legal team, led by heavyweight litigators Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson. In less than two years of litigation, there were nearly 1500 entries on the docket as a result of extensive motions practice.
“Today’s ruling makes it clear that Ms. Lively brought her claims in good faith, that there was no evidence she acted with malice, and that she is the prevailing defendant” under the California law she asserted, they said in a statement.
The lawyers added that Lively is gratified to show how the statute creates “a path for survivors to hold accountable those who weaponize online attacks and retaliatory lawsuits to intimidate and silence survivors.”
Under that law, the actress moved for attorneys’ fees, plus treble and punitive damages, for harm caused by Baldoni’s defamation claims. The statute, which went into effect in 2024, is intended to shield sexual harassment and assault victims when they report misconduct as long as they had a reasonable basis for their claims.
While the court denied damages in this case, it left open the possibility for Lively to seek additional damages through another lawsuit or counterclaim against Baldoni or Wayfarer, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read Lively’s full statement below:

Entertainment

Opera Company Sues to Collect $17 Million From the Kennedy Center

The Washington National Opera, which recently severed its longstanding relationship with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has filed a lawsuit that demands more than $17 million from the center that the opera company estimates it is owed.
The suit, filed Thursday, says that since the opera company struck out on its own this year, Kennedy Center officials have refused to release the money, which the court papers say includes endowment funds, other donations and income that was collected for the company’s benefit.
“W.N.O. reluctantly files this case to preserve its future and to protect its donors and artists,” lawyers for the opera said in court papers, which identify the funds as donor gifts received over years that are “critical” to its operations.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the center, said that the relationship with the opera company “financially burdened” the center for more than a decade. The statement noted that taking into account the company’s endowment, an external accounting firm had calculated that the company had “accumulated a $72 million deficit to the center” between 2011 and 2026, the years it was an affiliate of the institution.
“The center has acted transparently and in the best interests of the public throughout this process,” Ms. Daravi said. “This lawsuit is meritless, and we plan to pursue a countersuit to defend the institution.”
The opera left the center in January, nearly a year after President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center led to an exodus of audiences, artists and donors. Officials at the center said then that they had decided to part ways with the opera, which had played there since 1971, “due to a financially challenging relationship.”
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Entertainment

Inside Taylor Swift’s wild New York night out after Knicks historic win

Taylor Swift took the stage at the Songwriters Hall of Fame on Thursday in NYC still hoarse from cheering on the Knicks at MSG the night before.
“The quality of my speaking voice is the product of two things that I am not sorry for… One is that I was lucky enough to go to a Knicks game last night,” the “Shake It Off” icon said croakily while explaining her raspy tone after accepting an award from presenter Steven Spielberg, whose latest film was about to open in a few hours.
“I screamed for 100% of it,” she said of the Knicks game. “And then I got home and was like, ‘I gotta stop screaming’… And then I got to witness the amazing performances I saw tonight. I just never stopped screaming, and so this is what you get.”
Swift did not mention that she’d also arrived at Zero Bond earlier that morning at about 1a.m. flanked by Este and Alana Haim in a T-shirt that read “Stevie Knicks.” The pop star trio were seen exiting at about 3a.m.
Performers at the Songwriters gala included the contempo crooner Sombr, who did a rendition of Swift’s 2020 classic, “Cardigan” and her ballad, “Dear John.” (Sombr had also been out at Zero Bond the night before.)
Spielberg said that after accepting the gig as Swift’s presenter for the show, he instantly fretted because, “What could I possibly say about Taylor Swift that has not already been said? Just thinking about how much true, false and just plain crazy stuff has been written about you boggles the mind!”
So the “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” filmmaker asked AI, ironically, if it could tell him how many words have been written about Swift, and also how many words Swift has written. Both queries apparently stumped the bot. “She is such a force that the depths of her achievements defy AI,” the “Disclosure Day” director said.
Also honored at the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala were Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Kiss rockers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Walter Afanasieff and Terry Britten and Graham Lyle.

Entertainment

Spielberg returns to familiar alien territory : NPR

Earlier this year, former President Obama made waves in an interview when he said that he believed aliens were real, though he hadn’t seen any evidence of them during his time in office. President Trump accused Obama of revealing “classified information,” but then said that he would direct government agencies to release a number of images showing alien and extraterrestrial activity. The Pentagon rolled out those photos last month, but they were largely deemed fuzzy and inconclusive.
All this might sound like free publicity for Steven Spielberg’s new thriller, Disclosure Day, which is about a massive U.S. conspiracy to hide the fact that aliens have been visiting Earth for decades. If anything, though, the movie’s pleasures feel more retro than timely. It harks back to Spielberg’s greatest alien-themed hits, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and War of the Worlds. But it also feels like a throwback to the ’90s and early 2000s — the era of conspiracy-minded sci-fi series like The X-Files and M. Night Shyamalan’s eerie crop-circle thriller, Signs.
Disclosure Day stars Josh O’Connor as Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who decides to blow the whistle on his employer, Wardex. That’s a powerful agency, operating outside the boundaries of the government, that, for decades, has suppressed evidence of alien visits to Earth. Daniel has stolen video footage of these creatures, and he feels duty-bound to disclose it to the public — and to expose the sinister Wardex for having captured, detained and even tortured its share of aliens.
Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Mo., something strange happens when a TV meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt, tries to deliver her morning weather report. She freezes up on the air and begins making strange, guttural clicking noises, speaking what appears to be a kind of alien language. Around this time, Margaret also finds that she can read the minds of the people around her — a gift that comes in handy once she, too, goes on the run, with Wardex agents in pursuit.
Although Margaret and Daniel don’t know each other, they share a mysterious connection. Noah Scanlon, the head of Wardex, played by an unusually terrifying Colin Firth, is determined to stop them before they can make contact.
One of Scanlon’s deadliest weapons is a form of mind-control technology that he uses to try to get Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane, played by a very good Eve Hewson, to betray him. Whatever aliens might be capable of doing to us, the movie suggests, we have far more to fear from some of our fellow humans.
The mind-control bit is one of the movie’s cleverest sequences; a scene in which Margaret stages an almost Houdini-level escape is another. At 79, Spielberg is still the nimble filmmaker who delights in treating cinema as a magic trick. He’s also as skilled with actors as ever. Firth injects a palpable sense of anguish into the role of the movie’s big villain, and O’Connor brings an Everyman likability to his truth-telling tech whiz. But the most dazzlingly inventive work comes from Blunt.
Often a tough, sardonic screen presence, as in The Devil Wears Prada 2, Blunt gets to flex her proven action and comedy muscles in a more earnest emotional register. Like Richard Dreyfuss’ obsessed alien seeker in Close Encounters, Margaret is the kind of madly eccentric character Spielberg instinctively gravitates toward — someone who has little idea where she’s headed, but is convinced, rightly, that the truth really is out there.
There are other memorable characters, too. Colman Domingo gives a warm turn as a fellow whistleblower, who steers the operation from afar. And Elizabeth Marvel delivers a fine performance as a Catholic nun who, in one of the film’s more thoughtful asides, claims that the existence of aliens doesn’t threaten her belief in God. If anything, she says, it affirms that God, like the universe he created, is far bigger and more complex than humans like to acknowledge.
That’s a profoundly beautiful idea, though I wish Disclosure Day itself were a more complex movie. Spielberg’s storytelling is often described as overly sentimental, which isn’t always fair; his previous work, the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, was one of the most genuinely moving films of his career.
But sentimentality does ultimately overwhelm Disclosure Day, especially in the big finale, when the movie strains to bring its characters and indeed all of humanity together. Having shown us some of the terrible things powerful people are capable of, Spielberg makes a third-act lurch toward catharsis, as though desperate to suggest we aren’t beyond redemption as a species. Like the existence of alien life, our essential goodness is easy enough to believe in, but a lot harder to prove.

Entertainment

8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Olivia Rodrigo, Kelsey Lu, and More

With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new drops available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Olivia Rodrigo, Kelsey Lu, YHWH Nailgun, Horse Lords, and more. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Olivia Rodrigo: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love [Geffen]
Olivia Rodrigo made a name for herself as the pop star embracing ballads and bubblegrunge influences in equal doses. You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, her third album, proves she’s much more than that. The follow-up to 2024’s Guts is brash and bold, flinging heartbreak around until it becomes an art medium set to ’80s new wave, string-swollen hooks, and aughts Britpop. While “Drop Dead” and “The Cure” set the album’s tone, it’s the duet “What’s Wrong With Me” with Robert Smith of the Cure that gives it an extra jolt. After debuting it live with Rodrigo at Primavera, Smith gushed about how much he admires her: “She is genuinely fantastic as a songwriter and as a singer and performer.”
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Kelsey Lu: So Help Me God [Dirty Hit]
Although multi-hyphenate Kelsey Lu might seem adept at handling her music with meticulous care, her latest record, So Help Me God, is an ode to not having everything together. “This isn’t really a healing album,” the Los Angeles-based singer and cellist said in a statement. “It’s more of a reckoning. It’s about facing the parts of myself I tried to move past, and realising they were still shaping everything.” Enlisting Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman as co-producers and tapping Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and Kim Gordon for features, Lu burrows into the darkest corners and sharpest edges of her grief, emerging with a record that charts devotion and devastation through layers of new wave pop, orchestral R&B, and lush electronic. This is the sound of discovering who you are, idiosyncrasies and all.
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YHWH Nailgun: Magazine [4AD]
The members of YHWH Nailgun move as one piece. That seems like it would be standard for a band, especially one intricately stitching yelps, rolls, and flyaways as tightly as the New York experimental rockers do. But listening to Magazine—their new 10-track, 11-minute album—that artful density becomes singular, swaying as much as whipping between its frantic ideas. While their debut 45 Pounds stemmed from electrified math rock, Magazine blooms with expansive jazz and complex forms that feel like a daydream.
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Horse Lords: Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! [Rvng Intl.]
Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!, a typically knotty follow-up to Horse Lords’ 2022 LP Comradely Objects, continues the Baltimore-founded quartet’s quest to meld contrasting milieus—the minimalist and maximalist, childlike and intellectualized, earthy and science-fictional—into music that blends improv rock aesthetics with contemporary classical structure. The closer and title track serve as a belated mission statement, at once tonally busy and capaciously arranged, as if to make the frequency spectrum itself a character in the songs. More than formal tinkering, it plays like a heartfelt project to unseat us from complacent pessimism and reawaken a psychedelic curiosity about the future.
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Ruth Garbus: Profound [Orindal]
Ruth Garbus begins Profound “as relaxed as a woman can be when she’s filled with blood,” as she sings on “I Think I’m Ready Now,” melodies writhing from the dusty glow of her lo-fi, keys-and-guitar backdrop. The Vermont singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2023’s Alive People spends much of its runtime tweezing such poetic gems out of complex, knotty harmonies that can intensify like haunted orbs or burst like piñatas. Garbus writes with an almost violent clarity—as well as a happy, playful sensibility she attributes to starting medication for depression and anxiety—as she locks in with bandmates Nick Bisceglia and Elie McAfee-Hahn to interrogate the modern condition.
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Wiki: Ancient History [Wikset Enterprise]
When Wiki wrapped production on his new album Ancient History, the New York rapper couldn’t have known just how electric a moment in the city’s history it would be born into. But longtime Knicks fans and bandwagoners alike will appreciate this record’s dedication to the sounds of his hometown—more specifically, its parks system, a place that has brought him refuge, community, and inspiration over the years. Fellow New Yorkers Your Old Droog, duendita, and Salimata feature, and jazzy, often-introspective production from MIKE and Navy Blue builds out Wiki’s solo universe. By the end, it really does feel like New York or nowhere.
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Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer: Purity (Flips) [10K]
New Yorkers Anysia Kym and Tony Seltzer make for a dynamic duo., but they both know a bigger team can create magic. On Purity (Flips), they curate a killer lineup of producers spread far across their taste profiles, including Traxman, Loraine James, Popstar Benny, Bored Lord, Umru, Black Noi$e, and AceMo. 454 and Vayda also hop on for features, and MIKE represents for the home team with a remix credited to his alias DJ Blackpower. It’s a testament to not just Kym and Seltzer’s flexible sound, but their formidable profile in the underground.
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CFCF: L.U.V. [CFCF]
CFCF, the project of Montreal club lynchpin Mike Silver, returns with its first album in five years and first since Silver moved to Los Angeles. L.U.V. barrels headlong into a world that straddles sleazy techno and post-SOPHIE dance-pop, full of neon-balloon textures, deadpan mantras, and synth hooks blurted out like smoking-area confessions. As much as it consolidates the advances of modern club pop—see the Cecile Believe-assisted “Bad Song” or the four-on-the-floor, dance-pad beat of “Babes”—Silver resists pure bubblegum cynicism with counterintuitive melodic arcs that draw you ever deeper into the album’s seemingly flat, shining surfaces.
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