The drives were a way not only to catalog the landscapes he would later paint but also to understand the way the sun affected the visual identity of the city. If a friend were visiting for lunch at the beach, Hockney would take them on a "Wagner Drive," something he devised as an opera-loving motorist. He'd drive up through Malibu Canyon to Mulholland Drive and then west to Decker Canyon, where he would time the turns and crests to the crescendos of the classical composition.
As he drove he'd fast-forward the CD in the player to match the view in order to maximize the drama of the landscape. One of Hockney's first drives to Los Angeles was a cross-country dash with a pal: Brian Epstein had written on a napkin in Chicago inviting Hockney to see the Beatles in Los Angeles in He and a friend drove straight from Chicago to California in order to make it to the Hollywood Bowl in time, napkin in hand as his ticket backstage. Many of the places Hockney loved simply don't exist the way they once did.
For example, one of his favorite restaurants was a Japanese spot on the Sunset Strip, Imperial Gardens ; it's now the permanently closed Pink Taco Hollywood location, nestled beneath the Chateau Marmont. Hockney also took long drives in order to find interesting landscapes to doodle.
Schnitzer and His Family Foundation" on view. Read more: 17 groovy shops to add to your Palm Springs bucket list. Beyond Palm Springs β which Roberts described as more as a pit stop than a destination β Hockney was far more fascinated by what lay beyond. Like his famous photocollage " Pearblossom Highway" in , which depicts an intersection along California Highway , north of Los Angeles, he much preferred a landscape he could draw, and often visited the Mojave and Joshua Tree to do just that.
As Roberts put it, "For him [these drives] were adventures to find the obscure landscape in which to draw. After reading "City of Night" by John Rechy, Hockney saw Pershing Square as a sort of fantastical queer destination β and in the s, it very much was. Many of the International Style buildings in downtown L. While the old graphic clock is gone and the plaza's design has been radically changed, this building still stands in DTLA's Pershing Square.
