Hope blooms: The future looks fantastically floral
Aspasia Karras meditates on modern floral masters and the messages they’re sending us
David Hockney, he of summer dappled pools and Miami pastels, has made a statement in this season of lockdown. He has painted daffodils in all their simple, sculptural glory. His is a charmed offering to the gods, a hope for a new season. A digital artwork for our time — to balm the spirits of our troubled world. His yellow vision washed over me and cheered my soul as only flowers can. Even digital ones.
Hockney, like all great artists, has captured the undercurrents of the general mood. He’s given us the hope of renewal and the spirit of human ingenuity when it plays nicely with nature, while the ephemeral quality of life plays its solemn tune just below the surface. This is what the best of contemporary floral design is about. An aesthetic tussle with matters of life and death.