Hodgkin was commissioned in 2011 by the London Coordinating Committee for the Olympic Games to make a design that could be a poster, for mass distribution and a fine art print.

The poster is sold by the London 2012 shop in an initial edition of 50,000.

The print is sold by Counter Editions in a run of 350.

Paints Lomonosov porcelain plate, auctioned in London to benefit the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Designs backcloths for Mark Morris Dance Group’s Mozart Dances, to the composer’s Piano Concerto No.11, Sonata in D Major for 2 Pianos and Piano Concerto No. 27. It opens at New York State Theater, New York and then tours to Vienna, London, Chicago, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Toronto, Auckland, Washington, Seattle, Montpellier, Tel Aviv and Boston. The designs are ‘very bold, with a hint of violence’ (New Yorker); ‘lazy’ (www.thisislondon.com); ‘gorgeous’ (Daily Telegraph); ‘astounding’ (Times); ‘indeterminate smears of paint, splodgkins’ (Guardian); ‘pure genius’ (Boston Herald).

Commissioned by the Van Cliburn Foundation, Hodgkin makes a watercolour, Concert to be reproduced as a poster and programme cover. He comments:

“The image is meant to enable the LISTENING spectator to feel that they can go wherever they want—that their imagination can have total freedom, as if they were at a great concert.” 

Michael Auping, chief curator at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, commented, “The stage in its broadest sense has always been the subject of Hodgkin’s paintings, whether it be a dining room and the social interaction that takes place at an intimate dinner party, or a concert at Royal Albert Hall. The Van Cliburn watercolor is a classic Hodgkin presentation of the threading together of the visual and psychological energy at the latter.  Two dark, curtain-like planes flank the left and right sides of the image, creating a moody proscenium effect.  There are no figures yet on the stage.  To my mind, he is presenting the moment before the performer arrives, when the stage, indeed the entire hall, is quietly electric with the emotion of anticipation.”

Designs the MOMART Christmas/New Year object: 'blue skies, nothing but blue skies', a lithograph in blue crumpled up and contained in a blue cardboard box.

Designs backcloth for Mark Morris Dance Group’s Kolam, to music by Zakir Hussein and Ethan Iverson, first performed at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, California.

    Aldeburgh Festival stages an exhibition of H’s designs for the stage, in an installation curated by Patrick Kinmonth. The catalogue is edited by John-Paul Stonard. http://www.amazon.com/Howard-Hodgkin-Designs-John-Paul-Stonard/dp/094756487X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272454921&sr=1-7

Designs MOMART’s Christmas ‘card’, ‘blue skies, nothing but blue skies’, a blue box filled with crumpled blue paper.

Paints an image of an eye, which is enlarged photographically to cover the entire outside wall of the new circular Imax Cinema, on Waterloo Roundabout, London

    Paints an image for the Royal Mail, used on the 64p millennium stamp.

    Designs backcloth for Holst’s opera Savitri, staged in the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.  It is reused at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2002.

Designs programme book cover for the Glyndebourne Festival

Designs backcloths for Mark Morris Dance Group’s Rhymes with Silver, to music by Lou Harrison, first performed at New York State Theatre, New York.     www.markmorrisdancegroup.org

Illustrates Julian Barnes's short story Evermore, originally published in the New Yorker in 1995. The illustrated book is published by Palawan Press and includes six original etchings and a handpainted frontispiece.

Outing Art: the BBC Billboard Art Project (directed by Sheree Folkson). invites H (along with Richard Hamilton, Damien Hirst, Michael Landy and others), to make billboard-sized art. He paints A Small Thing Enlarged. (See film)

    Designs a mural for the multi-faceted front of the new British Council headquarters in New Delhi, architect Charles Correa. It evokes the shadows cast by a tree and is executed in black stone and white marble.

The Nutcracker

Designs a silk scarf for Marion Boulton Stroud’s Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, shown there in New Dimensions: Artists Design Scarves, 26 November 26, 1991 - January 4, 1992, curated by Dilys Blum, Philadelphia Museum of Art Curator of Costume and Textiles. http://www.fabricworkshop.org/

Illustrates Susan Sontag's short story The Way We Live Now, first published in The New Yorker in 1986. The book was published by Karsten Schubert and all proceeds were given to AIDS charities in the UK and USA.

Makes a poster of Highgate Ponds for the London Underground.  http://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/LTM/Posters/Artists/Product/Highgate-Ponds.html

Designs set and costumes for Piano, choreographed by Ashley Page for the Royal Ballet to Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, first performed at the Royal Opera House.

Designs a mural, ‘Wave’, for the swimming pool (now part of the Virgin Active Healthclub) in the Broadgate Centre, London EC2 (architect Peter Foggo; commissioned by Rosehaugh Stanhope), which is executed in Venetian glass mosaic. http://www.virginactive.co.uk/ClubInfo/Default.aspx?ClubID=466

Designs sets and costumes for Pulcinella to music by Stravinsky, choreographed by Richard Alston for Ballet Rambert, first performed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. Filmed by Bob Lockyer for BBC TV it is now available on DVD. http://www.amazon.com/Stravinsky-Pulcinella-Richard-Christopher-Britton/dp/B000BZIT52/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1272454711&sr=1-1

Tricia Guild of Designers Guild commissions H to design fabrics. They are printed in Switzerland; Large Flower and Leaf on glazed chintz; Moss and Earth on cotton satin .

Luciana Martinez de la Rosa invites H to contribute a design to her Artplate series, along with Trojan, Barry Flanagan, Patrick Caulfield and others. http://www.victorwatts.com/Watts Cooking/Artist's Plates

Designs sets and costumes for Night Music, choreographed by Richard Alston for Ballet Rambert. It used Mozart’s notturni and divertimenti, was set in a garden by night, and first performed at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. See Angela Kane, ‘Richard Alston: Twenty-One Years of Choreography’, Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Autumn, 1989