David Hockney’s The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven)– 31 May, No. 2 sold for £214,200 at Phillips Evening & Day Editions Auction on Jan. 18–19, 2023 in London. The vibrant and aptly titled cover image gives me a sense of optimism that warm weather isn’t far off, even as I write this on a snowy winter day.
What one might find pleasantly intriguing and surprising about this particular piece is the medium in which it was created—the drawing was made on an iPad and then printed on woven paper. Not one to shy away from experimenting with new mediums and pushing boundaries (Hockney used a computer program to sketch directly on screen back in 1985), over a decade ago, the 85-year-old artist turned to the iPad as a tool for his drawing. The resulting works stay true to Hockney’s famed colorful and bold style.
Many advisors and planners had to grapple with the roadblock of helping older clients get acclimated to using technology for their estate-planning needs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. If Hockney’s tech savviness at his age is any indication, estate-planning professionals in particular shouldn’t be deterred from modernizing many aspects of their practice out of concern of alienating a certain demographic of clients. As the adage goes, the future is digital.
Some of our other favorites from Phillips Evening & Day Editions Auction on Jan. 18–19, 2023 in London appear throughout the issue.