DAVID Hockney was stuck in a lift at an Amsterdam museum last night after attending a premiere of a new exhibition of his works.

He was rescued by firefighters after 30 minutes stuck in the lift, which was reportedly overloaded, at the Van Gogh Museum.

The new exhibition highlights the influences of the tormented Dutch master on the later landscape works of the 81-year-old Bradford artist.

BBC broadcaster James Naughtie was one of the nine other people in the lift, which was inside Hockney's hotel, at the time.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme afterwards, Naughtie told the artist: "You were very calm."

Mr Hockney replied: "Yeah, well, we were in there half an hour weren't we?"

Asked whether it had happened before, he said: "No, never."

Naughtie said that Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig, a friend of artist's, had been waiting for the artist in the lobby and "shouted to reassure us" while helping with the rescue efforts.

The Daily Mail said Mr Hockney was offered a glass of whisky after the ordeal but replied: "No, no, a nice cup of Yorkshire tea would be perfect.

"I feel fine, I just need a cigarette."

Broadcaster Naughtie said: "We were coming down in David Hockney's hotel next to the Van Gogh Museum so that we could find a quiet spot for the interview.

"A little crowd packed into the lift ... It jerked to a halt, stuck. We pressed the alarm - nothing....

"Someone suggested pushing in the ceiling, because that's what happens in the movies when people climb out by scrambling up the metal wires. No."

After half an hour "we heard feet on the roof of the lift" and "the glimpse of a fireman's uniform."

The door "was wrenched back" and there were "cheers" from the crowd that had gathered in the lobby.

"Afterwards the firemen gathered round - they wanted a picture with Hockney," Naughtie said.

Later, Mr Hockney, who has been named the world's greatest-living artist, said he was "flattered" to be the focus of the Van Gogh museum exhibition.

He said he had not stopped being curious, adding: "When I die it might be another adventure, I don't know."

The exhibition Hockney-Van Gogh: The Joy Of Nature opens tomorrow and runs until May 26.

It features both artists' landscapes, juxtaposing paintings and drawings by the 19th century Dutchman with Hockney works ranging from small charcoal sketches and watercolours to giant, wall-filling paintings, videos and iPad drawings.

"I've always found the world quite beautiful, looking at it, Just looking," Mr Hockney said in the exhibition's catalogue.

"And that's an important thing I share with Vincent van Gogh: We both really, really enjoy looking at the world."

Curator Edwin Becker compares Mr Hockney's return from Los Angeles to Yorkshire to Van Gogh's move from Paris to southern France, saying their re-locations helped both artists reconnect with nature.

Van Gogh found beauty in the landscapes of France, from freshly harvested fields to trees ablaze with blossom, even if the darkness of some paintings also betray the mental anguish he could not escape.

Mr Hockney, after a long and productive period living and working in LA, returned to his roots and started closely studying the landscapes around him.

"In the fields and woods of East Yorkshire, he rediscovered again the seasons, the variety of colour tones and tonalities, the subtle play of light and the ever-changing weather conditions," Mr Becker said.

While the show demonstrates that Mr Hockney has been influenced by many artists, such as Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Meindert Hobbema, the similarities between Van Gogh and Mr Hockney can be striking.

The pink and blue brush strokes that make up the swirling sky in Hockney's 2009 painting, May Blossom On The Roman Road, echo Van Gogh, even the Dutchman's dark and brooding Wheatfield With Crows.

"If we look at Hockney's landscape pictures, sketches, drawings, watercolours, oils we feel the heartbeat of Van Gogh," Mr Becker said.

He added that both artists share a passion for innovation, Van Gogh created his own distinctive style by drawing on movements such as impressionism and pointillism, while Mr Hockney has embraced techniques and technology including iPads, video and photography.

Van Gogh's paintings, normally so striking, can seem a little overshadowed in the presence of some of Mr Hockney's works.

That is particularly the case with The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire In 2011, a huge oil painting on loan from the Pompidou Centre in Paris that is made up of 32 canvasses and fills an entire wall.

That work, with its bold colours and strong vertical lines, reflects Mr Hockney's determination, like that of Van Gogh before him, to breathe new life into landscape painting.

"I knew landscape was seen as something you couldn't do today," Mr Hockney says on the museum's website.

"Why? You can't be bored of nature, can you? And Van Gogh knew that."