The Beverly Hills Housewife: Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool

In David Hockney’s Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–7), art collector Betty Freeman appears in a columnar pink robe framed by the hard angles and surfaces of her excitingly modern home. Cahill takes this single painting as a starting point for an exploration of Hockney’s libidinal fantasies of California, his fascination with Piero della Francesca and the liberatory impact of Los Angeles. Freeman emerges as a distinct figure, a woman with a strong sense of her own taste in art and music, who was nevertheless open to having her mind changed – it took numerous visits to Hockney’s studio, watching the painting progress, before she decided she liked it. Cahill brings a novelist’s sensibility to bear in this experimental exercise in art writing. James Cahill is a British art critic, academic, and author. He earned a degree in Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, followed by a master's degree in Contemporary Art from the Courtauld Institute. He has written for publications including Apollo, The Burlington Magazine, The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement. In 2022, his debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, was published. Extent: 272 pp Format: Hardback Illustrations: 68 Publication date: 2026-08-27 Size: 23.4 x 15.3 cm ISBN: 9780500028810