David Hockney

Source

• Born: 9 July 1937
• Birthplace: Bradford, England
• Best Known As: British pop artist and critic

David Hockney became internationally famous in the early 1960s as one of the leaders of the pop art movement in the United Kingdom. He emigrated to the United States and was known for his "swimming pool" paintings during the '60s, for elaborate stage sets during the '70s and for photo collages during the '80s. In recent years he has gained more attention for his book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Techniques of the Old Masters (2001), in which he advanced the theory that as early as 1420 art masters were using optical devices to assist them in their work.

One of his most famous paintings -- thanks to poster sales -- is "Nichols Canyon," which can be seen here.

For more information on David Hockney, visit Britannica.com.

(b Bradford, 9 July 1937). English painter, printmaker, photographer and stage designer. Perhaps the most popular and versatile British artist of the 20th century, Hockney made apparent his facility as a draughtsman while studying at Bradford School of Art between 1953 and 1957, producing portraits and observations of his surroundings under the influence of the Euston Road School and of Stanley Spencer. From 1957 to 1959 he worked in hospitals as a conscientious objector to fulfil the requirements of national service. On beginning a three-year postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1959, he turned first to the discipline of drawing from life in two elaborate studies of a skeleton before working briefly in an abstract idiom inspired by the paintings of Alan Davie.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

In addition to his photographs and individual art shows, versatile artist David Hockney (born 1937) has also produced work as a painter, graphic artist, stage designer, and writer.

Aself-taught artist, David Hockney is best known for his captivating photographs and individual art shows that display his work. Hockney has worked also as an independent painter, graphic artist, and stage designer. Hockney's reputation as a genuinely original and powerful artist is secure even though his work continues to push the boundaries of public perception and critical opinions. Although much of his work is considered "user-friendly" and tasteful, thereby considered modernist, Hockney has the ability to shock. Hockney's uncanny ability to navigate the tides of public opinions and perceptions of him has provided him with a reputation that is not only accepting of criticism, but incorporates such criticism into future works. He has taught as an art instructor at a variety of schools, including the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at Berkeley. Hockney was awarded an honorary degree in 1988 from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Although considered by some critics to be a lightweight, Hockney continues to prove his versatility through teaching and writing as well as his skill through painting to create works of an accomplished artist.

Introduction to Art

David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England on July 9, 1937. Hockney admired the likes of Picasso, Dufy, Matisse, and Fragonard. He tried to utilize their techniques in his "impressionistic" photographs which later lead to paintings. Hockney's parents, Kenneth and Laura Hockney, allowed their son early on to explore the world around him and have the freedom and mobility to interpret what he saw in way that pleased him. This freedom of expression enabled the young Hockney to not only gain admittance to the Bradford Grammar Art School Society, but he received his first recognition there as well. At eleven years of age, Hockney's work was characterized by happiness in images such as a wave cresting against the shore, a kiss, or a drop of water. The young Hockney believed that life's simple pleasures were often not adequately imitated in art; that in the rush of people's existence they often failed to notice the simplicity and serenity of the world around them. Hockney believed he could reproduce these images through his art and thereby provide people with some of the pleasures they may have overlooked. Hockney felt his work would help people realize that play and its enjoyment in and of itself was serious work.

Formal Schooling and Influences

In addition to the Bradford Grammar School of Art, Hockney attended the Bradford College of Art between the years 1953 and 1957. He later attended the Royal College of Art in London, England, from 1959 until 1962. Even with the extensive formal training and education, Hockney's style was essentially acquired through self instruction. He was especially talented in the area of photography and learned his skill with constant practice and dedication beginning in 1962. Hockney's early exposure to art as well as the work he produced while training was considered to be largely conservative, thereby making it pleasurable to look at.

It is a widely held belief among those in the art world that Hockney's meeting with the modern artist Jacob Kramer in Leeds and the viewing of Alan Davie's exhibition in Wakfield in 1958 pushed Hockney towards the type of work that is considered avant-garde and identified him more with the pop artists of the late sixties. Alan Davie went on to hold a considerable influence over Hockney. This influence is dramatically represented by a series of abstract expressionists canvases that Hockney produced during his first year at the Royal College of the Arts.

That year, 1959, Hockney joined a small group of other young, experimental artists that included the likes of Peter Blake and Allen Jones. Another individual that tremendously affected Hockney and held considerable influence over the work produced by Hockney was American artist R. B. Kitaj. Kitaj's work was of commonplace scenes as well as contemporary people and events. Almost simplistic at first notice, Kitaj's work evolved into much more detail the more it was viewed. While Kitaj's work discreetly affected the British Pop Art movement, it profoundly affected Hockney. Hockney's keen awareness of the times around him is directly attributed, in many critic's opinions, to Kitaj.

Hockney developed the ability to take an ordinary scene and develop it through photographs and paint into something incredibly pleasing to view. The ability to develop such scenes immediately earned Hockney a place among contemporary artists of his time. Although not considered a master yet, his work was certainly begin to demonstrate the signs. A second American artist that influenced Hockney was Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg's compositions also lead Hockney in becoming more aware of his surroundings and how such surroundings could be propelled into lasting art. These influences, along with Hockney's own indescribable tastes, allowed Hockney the rare privilege to experiment with his work, while still growing to become a serious artist.

Hockney's Arrival

David Hockney was able to combine his formidable knowledge relating to the history of art and its techniques with a very unusual insight or sensitivity to the contemporary visual currents. He was able to produce what the public wanted at the time, or more specifically, Hockney was able to create exactly what the art connoisseur thought he wanted. Regardless of the critics' interpretations, Hockney developed this keen sense and ability (along with his love of publicity, that at times has been considered flagrant opportunism by his challengers) into an art world marvel that has kept him on the forefront of the American and British art scenes.

Hockney arrived in the professional art world on the coattails of the 1960s and the world's fascination with Pop Art. Hockney was able to manipulate his innate skill as a photographer and his learned ability to paint and combined them into something that, while not new, took people by surprise. For example, Hockney would take two, sometimes more, photographs of the same image but from different vantage points, thereby changing the actual image only slightly. However, by combining the photos, Hockney created a distinct and well-integrated work. The idea of a photographic collage, while not new, provided Hockney with a new medium to capitalize on. Even though other artists such as Rejlander and Muybridge had done similar work to Hockney's, they had not attempted it on the same scale. Such ability earned Hockney the 1985 Infinity Award. This achievement is awarded to an artist in any media that utilizes photography.

Hockney's Ideas

For Hockney, the ability to capture ideas came easily. He possessed an insight that illuminated for him the hidden beauty in the person walking down the street or the poem written a hundred years ago. Hockney pulled ideas for art from everywhere. Some of his more significant sources, artists in their own right, included Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet, and Francis Bacon. Hockney also admired William Blake. Blake's poetry provided Hockney with vivid imagery that he transferred with great success to canvas, but never showed publicly. Hockney did, however, produce and show several works based on the works of Walt Whitman. One such work, the 1961 etching Myself and My Heroes, depicted Hockney along with Whitman and Mahatma Gandhi. Quotations from Whitman are prevalent throughout Hockney's work. Hockney was able to use the words of Whitman to more clearly express the abstract and ambiguity in art. Such situations arose, according to Hockney, when a artist lacked skill or was confused.

Hockney drew ideas from fairy tales as well. Some of his more renowned work comes from his etchings of tales by the Brothers Grimm. His 1969 one-person show at the Kasmin featured etchings made up largely of six of the Grimm's tales. The completion of this particular work and show fulfilled a lifelong dream of Hockney's; he had even taken a boat trip on the Rhine from Mainz to Cologne so as to be able to capture the atmosphere and vividness of the tales.

Contemporary Hockney

By the early 1970s, Hockney had moved on to more realistic and conventional paintings. Increasingly inspired by Balthus, Edward Hopper, and Giorgio Morandi, Hockney's work became less and less influenced by literature. This move was well received by critics. While Hockney's work is physically larger than what he used to produce, his later work exemplified post-painterly abstraction in a combination with minimalism. Such a combination allowed Hockney to move even closer to a permanence within the art world. Hockney's work has been displayed internationally.

No longer does Hockney have to contend with accusations of not being a true artist. Hockney has not only proven his versatility in art but in other areas as well. He has published an extensive number of books and screenplays, worked as a set and costume stage designer, and has made numerous television and film appearances. Hockney has been awarded numerous honors, including the Guinness Award and the 1991 Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association. Although Hockney was first identified with late Pop Art, he has transcended that label to become one of the few internationally known and lasting artists to come out of the 1960s.

Further Reading

Smith, Roberta, "From the Heart and Hand of David Hockney, " in New York Times, April 3, 1996, p. B1.

Peppiatt, Michael, "Sunshine Superman, " in Town & Country Monthly, April 1996, p. 43.

Glover, Michael, "David Hockney, " in ARTnews, April 1996, p. 143.

Luckhardt, Urlich, and Melia, Paul, "A Drawing Retrospective, " in David Hockney, Chronicle Books, 1996.

Webb, Peter, Portrait of David Hockney, Dutton, 1st American edition, 1988.

Livingstone, Marco, David Hockney, 1st American edition, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981.

Knewstub, John, and Maurice Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, St. Martin's Press, 1952, 1974.

Hockney, David (b. 1937), British artist, born in Bradford, Yorkshire, and trained at the Royal College of Art. His interests have included painting, printmaking, film-making, and stage design. His creative use of photography began in 1981 when he became dissatisfied with the restrictions imposed by single-viewpoint perspective. He therefore made large collages of photographs, including Polaroids, taken from different viewpoints; work that he described as ‘a critique of photography made in the medium of photography’. A selection of it was shown at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1983. Hockney's interest in painters' use of optical devices in the past produced the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (2001).

— Chris Roberts

Bibliography

• Hockney's Photographs, introd. M. Haworth-Booth 1983).
• Joyce, P., Hockney on Photography (1988)

Quotes:

"Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus."

"If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed."

"Television is becoming a collage -- there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different."

David Hockney
We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961)
Born	9 July 1937 (1937-07-09) (age 72) Bradford, England
Nationality	English
Field	Painting, Set design, Photography
Movement	Pop art

David Hockney, CH, RA, (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire, although he also maintains a base in London. An important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.^[1]

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 2.1 The "joiners" 2.2 Later works 3 The Hockney-Falco thesis 4 Public life 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Life

Hockney was born in Bradford and educated first at Wellington Primary School. He later went to Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, where he met R. B. Kitaj. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries—alongside Peter Blake—that announced the arrival of British Pop Art. He became associated with the movement, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon. Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a poem by Walt Whitman, these works make reference to his love for men. From 1963 Hockney was represented by the influential art dealer John Kasmin. In 1963 Hockney visited New York, making contact with Andy Warhol. Later, a visit to California, where he lived for many years, inspired Hockney to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles using the comparatively new Acrylic medium, rendered in a highly realistic style using vibrant colours. In 1967, his painting, Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool, won the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He also made prints, portraits of friends, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Hockney's older sister, Margaret, who also lives in Yorkshire, is an artist of still-life photos.

Works

The "joiners"

David Hockney has also worked with photography, or, more precisely, photocollage. Using varying numbers of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work which has an affinity with Cubism, an affinity which was one of Hockney's major aims - discussing the way human vision works. Some of these pieces are landscapes such as Pearblossom Highway #2,^[1][2] others being portraits, e.g. Kasmin 1982,^[3] and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.^[4]

These photomontage works appeared mostly between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as "joiners".^[5] He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject would actually move while being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer's perspective. In later works Hockney changed his technique and moved the camera around the subject instead.

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography. Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one eyed' approach,^[6] he later returned to painting.

Later works

A Bigger Splash, 1967

In 1974, Hockney was the subject of Jack Hazan's film, A Bigger Splash (named after one of Hockney's swimming pool paintings from 1967).

In 1977 David Hockney authored a book, including the poetry of Wallace Stevens, of etchings called "The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso". The etchings, inspired by and meant to represent the themes of Stevens' poem, "The Man With The Blue Guitar". It was published as a portfolio and as a book in Spring, 1997 by Petersburg Press.^[7]

Hockney was commissioned to design the cover and a series of pages for the December 1985 issue of the French edition of Vogue magazine. Consistent with his interest in Cubism and admiration for Pablo Picasso, Hockney chose to paint Celia Birtwell (who appears in several of his works) with different views—her facial features as if the eye had scanned her face diagonally.

Another important commission of his was to draw with the Quantel Paintbox, a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch direct onto the monitor screen. This commission was taken by Hockney in December 1985. Using this program was similar to drawing on the PET film for prints which he had much experience in. His work created using the Quantel formed part of a BBC series featuring a number of artists.

A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998, National Gallery of Australia.

His A Bigger Grand Canyon, a series of 60 paintings which combined to produce one enormous picture, was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million.

On 21 June 2006, his painting of The Splash fetched £2.6 million - a record for a Hockney painting.^[8]

In October 2006 the National Portrait Gallery in London organized one of the largest ever displays of Hockney's portraiture work, including 150 of his paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks and photocollages from over the course of five decades. The collection consisted of his earliest self-portraits up into his latest work completed in 2005.^[9] The exhibition proved to be one of the most successful in the gallery's history, and Hockney himself assisted in displaying the works. The exhibition ran until January 2007.

In June 2007, Hockney's largest painting, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which measures 15 x 40-foot, was hung in the Royal Academy's largest gallery in their annual Summer Exhibition.^[10] This work "is a monumental-scale view of a coppice in Hockney's native Yorkshire, between Bridlington and York. It was painted on 50 individual canvases, mostly working in situ, over five weeks last winter."^[11] In 2008, he donated this work to the Tate Gallery in London, saying: "I thought if I'm going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It's going to be here for a while. I don't want to give things I'm not too proud of...I thought this was a good painting because it's of England...it seems like a good thing to do".^[12]

Many of Hockney's works are now housed in a converted industrial building called Salts Mill, in Saltaire, near his home town of Bradford.

Since 2009, Hockney has made drawings using the Brushes iPhone application. He spoke with Lawrence Weschler in an interview:

"It's always there in my pocket, there's no thrashing about, scrambling for the right color. One can set to work immediately, there's this wonderful impromptu quality, this freshness, to the activity; and when it's over, best of all, there's no mess, no clean-up. You just turn off the machine. Or, even better, you hit Send, and your little cohort of friends around the world gets to experience a similar immediacy. There's something, finally, very intimate about the whole process."^[13]

Weschler's article also includes an audio slideshow of the images along with commentary from Weschler and Hockney himself.

The Hockney-Falco thesis

Main article: Hockney-Falco thesis

In the 2001 television programme and book, Secret Knowledge, Hockney posited that the Old Masters used camera obscura techniques, utilized with a concave mirror, which allowed the subject to be projected onto the surface of the painting. Hockney argues that this technique migrated gradually to Italy and most of Europe, and is the reason for the photographic style of painting we see in the Renaissance and later periods of art. This theory has been opposed by the Art Renewal Center who have published several articles attempting to disprove "Secret Knowledge" by means of historical documents and the experiences of living artists who do not use any photography yet have produced photorealistic drawings and paintings.^[14][15][16]

Public life

A conscientious objector, Hockney worked as a medical orderly in hospitals as his National Service in the 1950s.

He was made a Companion of Honour in 1997 and is also a Royal Academician.

Hockney serves on the advisory board of the political magazine Standpoint,^[17] and contributed original sketches for its launch edition, in June 2008.^[18]

See also

• A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlan
• Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy

References

1. ^ ^{a b} J. Paul Getty Museum. David Hockney. Retrieved 13 September 2008.
2. ^ Image of Pearblossom Highway
3. ^ Image of Kasmin 1982
4. ^ Image of photocollage My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982
5. ^ Hockney on Photography: Conversations with Paul Joyce (1988) ISBN 0224024841
6. ^ Hockney on Art - Paul Joyce ISBN 140870157X
7. ^ Amazon.com: The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso
8. ^ Hockney painting sells for £2.6m
9. ^ Meredith Etherington-Smith (15 August 2006). "A David Hockney Moment". ARTINFO. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/19262/a-david-hockney-moment/. Retrieved 2008-04-17. 
10. ^ Bigger Trees near Warter as seen in the Royal Academy, June 2007
11. ^ Charlotte Higgins, Hockney's big gift to the Tate: a 40ft landscape of Yorkshire's winter trees, The Guardian, 8 April 2008 [1]
12. ^ Simon Crerar "David Hockney donates Bigger Trees Near Warter to Tate", The Times, 7 April 2008.
13. ^ Lawrence Weschler, "David Hockney's iPhone Passion, The New York Review of Books, 22 October 2009
14. ^ Kirk Richards (2003). "New Book on Old Masters Methods is a Leap of Logic Without Substance". Art Renewal Center. http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/David_Hockney/hockney1.asp. 
15. ^ ARC staff (2003). "Hockney's Secret Knowledge: Refuted". Art Renewal Center. http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Hockney_Refuted/hockney1.asp. 
16. ^ Brian Yoder (2003). "Why David Hockney Should Not Be Taken Seriously". Art Renewal Center. http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2004/Hockney/yoder1.asp. 
17. ^ Standpoint staff (2009). "Standpoint Advisory Board". Social Affairs Unit Magazines. http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/about-us. 
18. ^ Standpoint staff (2008). "David Hockney - Exclusive sketches for his new Tate masterpiece". Social Affairs Unit Magazines Ltd. http://standpointmag.co.uk/magazine/26. 

External links

• Hockneypictures.com Official website
• DavidHockney.com tribute site
• Salts Mill in Saltaire, Yorkshire, England, contains a permanent exhibition of Hockney's work.
• Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool (1966) at The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
• New Yorker discussion of Hockney's suggestion that the Old Masters used optical devices to aid drawing
• Hockney leads smoking ban protest BBC article.
• Jonathan Jones, Cooler than Warhol, more enduring than Freud (Interview), The Guardian, 8 September 2006
• A A Gill, The Turner Surprise: David Hockney on Turner, The Times, 17 June 2007
• David Hockney, The Fallen Beech Trees and the Lost Canvas, The Guardian, 27 March 2009
• David Hockney's Long Road From Los Angeles to Yorkshire, The New York Times, 15 October 2009
• David Hockney: Portrait of the Old Master, Tim Adams, The Guardian and Observer, 1 November 2009

Persondata
NAME	Hockney, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English artist, painter, printmaker
DATE OF BIRTH	9 July 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bradford, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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