Howard Hodgkin: 'Once I stop painting, they should start measuring my coffin'

He may be in his 80s and in need of a wheelchair to get about, but Howard Hodgkin still paints with staggering power. Jonathan Jones meets a 'living master'

A brush with Howard: a rare glimpse inside Hodgkin's studio in pictures

Howard Hodgkin sits in a wheelchair in his studio. Light falls through the glass roof on to big boards propped against white-washed brick walls. One by one, his studio assistant starts moving them to reveal a glistening array of new paintings. It seems banal to call them beautiful but that's what they are.

"When I was young," says Hodgkin reassuringly, "I used to mind people describing my pictures as beautiful. I don't any more." Why did he mind? "I used to think that it meant the subject was neither here nor there."