‘Cultural Olympiad’ before the 2012 London Olympics

Works by David Hockney, Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud will headline the mega ‘Cultural Olympiad’, a series of significant arts events in the run-up to the keenly awaited London 2012 Olympics, while JMW Turner and Pablo Picasso will be the subjects of two landmark shows.

Over 150 works by David Hockney will be on view at the Royal Academy in the first major exhibit from January 21 next year to showcase his landscapes. After spending time in Los Angeles for three decades, the artist has returned to Bridlington, east Yorkshire, an area that has inspired several of his large-scale landscape works, like his giant painting of Woldgate Woods.

The show will feature drawings, paintings, and some ‘new technology’ pieces by the 74-year old artist, who has seamlessly embraced the digital age, with artworks on iPad and iPhone. For the first time, his films will also be shown. He has often revealed of having been inspired by Picasso. And co-incidentally, the Spanish artist will form the subject of a show at Tate Britain in a couple of months’ time.

‘Picasso and Modern British Art’ runs from at the gallery from February. It will feature over 150 works from the various public and private collections across the globe. The exhibit will chart his emergence in Britain as both a celebrity and a controversial figure. February will also witness the launch of a highly anticipated show in recent years; it’s Lucian Freud Portraits showcase at the National Portrait Gallery, including 100 of his works on paper and paintings lent by private collections and museums around the world.

His final unfinished work just before his death ‘Portrait of the Hound’ (2011) - an unfinished nude of his assistant with his dog, will be shown for the first time. Later in March, the National Gallery and Tate Britain collaborate on an exhibit of works by JMW Turner and Claude Lorrain, the 17th-century French landscape artist.