David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, OM CH RAis an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth9 July 1937
views mind world
It's all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops—for a split second.
hate backgrounds background-music
I never work with music. I hate background music, always did. I only like music in the foreground, meaning, deliberately listen to it, actually.
photography mean thinking
But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.
moving becoming different
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.
photography
I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.
years drawing fifty
Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.
artist able paint
What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.
art technology together
I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries.
home house looks
Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.
art strong light
What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they paint shadows in European art? Shadows are because of optics. Optics need shadows and strong light. Strong light makes the deepest shadows. It took me a few years to realize fully that the art historians didn't grasp that. There are a lot of interesting new things, ideas, pictures.
beautiful morning light
I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light.
thinking space sound
I've always been interested in space in pictures. I think my going deaf increased my spatial sense, because I can't get the direction of sound. I feel that I see space very clearly, and that's because I can't hear it. So it's a compensatory thing.
photography clearing-out needs
The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.
planning spontaneous be-spontaneous
You must plan to be spontaneous.