Norman Rosenthal, former Royal Academy exhibitions secretary, reflects on his six-decade relationship with David Hockney culminating in the 2025 Fondation Louis Vuitton exhibition. The curator first encountered Hockney's work in 1964 at John Kasmin's London gallery, where figurative paintings stood alongside abstract works by Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton presented approximately 450 works spanning Hockney's 70-year career in Frank Gehry's Paris galleries. Rosenthal recounts convincing Royal Academy members to showcase Hockney's Grand Canyon paintings by taking them to his Pompidou Center retrospective. The exhibition marked their final collaboration before Hockney's death in 2022.

Rosenthal emphasizes how Hockney maintained consistency while exploring diverse subjects—from swimming pools to Yorkshire landscapes to Normandy scenes during the pandemic. The recurring motif of roads 'going somewhere' appears across Hockney's work, from opera sets to reinterpretations of old master paintings. Even in declining health, Hockney produced new portraits with sharp memory and steady hand.

The scale of Hockney's output—70 years of prodigious work—demonstrates why his market remains robust decades after his rise to fame. Major retrospectives like this Paris show continue validating his position among contemporary art's most significant figures, influencing how collectors and institutions value his extensive catalog.