Defiant Hockney, Bacon Feted; Kiefer’s Alchemy: London Galleries

Last year, David Hockney reminisced to me about Francis Bacon, characterizing him as “the first intelligent painter I met who dismissed a lot of abstract art.”

Bacon would quote Giacometti, who dubbed abstraction “the art of the handkerchief” -- all stains and dribbles. The young Hockney was amused by this outrageous contradiction of what was then a powerful art-world fashion.