“All blossoms share a characteristic and a significance: they’re frail, and they have a transience that, in Potter’s words, reminds us of the ‘nowness of everything.’ In only one or two pictures does Hockney’s blossom suggest that. Mostly, the blossom looked solid enough to stick to its bushes for ever, writhing from branches like a crop of impaled yellow slugs. I never thought that blossom could look so evil.”