‘Suggestive toothpaste tubes shooting into mouths’: David Hockney’s winking celebration of queer life
David Hockney's early paintings, including 'We Two Boys Together Clinging' (1961) and 'Cleaning Teeth, Early Evening (10pm) W11' (1962), are examined as pioneering expressions of queer identity in British art. The article highlights how Hockney used coded imagery—such as suggestive toothpaste tubes and intimate domestic scenes—to depict same-sex desire while evading censorship laws, long before homosexuality was partially decriminalized in England and Wales. His move to Los Angeles in 1964 allowed him to portray gay life more openly, with works like 'Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool' and 'A Bigger Splash' becoming iconic symbols of queer domesticity and desire.