New painting by David Hockney fronts the cover of The New Yorker

The New Yorker is known for consistently commissioning fantastic covers. Last week saw them feature a musical cover — the first of its kind — by Tom Gauld. April 23rd, 2018, sees the release of the magazine’s Travel and Food issue, featuring David Hockney’s commission, “The Road”, a detail of a new painting the revered artist has created.

Hockney, who has recently celebrated his eightieth year with a retrospective at both Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, knows no bounds to his experimental approach to creativity. Having worked on a number of New Yorker covers over the past few years utilising his iPad as a drawing medium, his most recent cover fuses elements of photography, collage and hexagonal canvases.

The cover adapts Tall Dutch Trees After Hobbema (Useful Knowledge) 2017, which itself was born out of a fascination with Dutch artist, Meidert Hobbema’s painting The Avenue of Middelharnis — a seventeenth century work which hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery. “I’ve always loved it,” Hockney told the New Yorker. “What’s fascinating is that, in the painting, there are two vanishing points. One is in the centre of the painting ,with the disappearing road. But the other is in the sky. You’re always looking up, because the trees are so tall.” Hockney’s contribution has us mesmerised in a similar way.