David Hockney's Last Self-Portrait and His Smoking Obsession

David Hockney, the British artist, died this week at age 88. His final self-portrait, titled 'Spiel im Spiel im Spiel und ich mit einer Zigarette,' was exhibited in a Paris retrospective in 2025. The painting features a Droste effect: a figure holding an image of a figure holding an image, with a brush in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Hockney's smoking habit brought him into conflict with the Paris Metro and others. He reportedly hoarded 2,000 cigarettes for emergencies and outlived four of his doctors. The work reflects his lifelong obsession with smoking, which he saw as a social crutch or a Freudian reaction, and became a theme of his later activism.