David Hockney (b.1937) is a painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. He is best known for his fascination with light and a frank mundane realism derived from Pop art and photography.
Born in Bradford, Hockney studied at the Royal College of Art in London. Associated with the Pop Art movement, his early paintings juxtaposition artistic styles and fashions, with graffiti-like figures and words, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961,) and a technique ranging from the extensive use of rich color to a pleasing delicacy of line.
A visit to America inspired Hockney’s series of etchings, The Rake’s Progress (1963,) based on his adventures in New York. While he was in California (1963–67,) he developed his celebrated ‘swimming-pool’ paintings, such as The Sunbather (1966.) His later work, often double portraits, is more representative, such as Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970–71.) He also designed for several operas, including Mozart’s Magic Flute at Glyndebourne (1978.)
In 1982, rejecting a one-point perspective, Hockney began a series of photo-collages (Cameraworks,) composed of multiple separate shots. He has also experimented with computer technology and digital inkjet printings, as in ‘The Studio March 28th, 1995’ (1995.) He transmitted huge murals to exhibitions by fax.
Hockney’s books include Hockney by Hockney (1976,) Travels with Pen, Pencil, and Ink (1978,) Paper Pools (1980,) David Hockney Photographs (1982,) China Diary (1982,) and Hockney Paints the Stage (1983.) His autobiography is That’s The Way I See It (1993.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by David Hockney
Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.
—David Hockney
Topics: Design
Anything simple always interests me.
—David Hockney
Topics: Simplicity
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
Topics: Television
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.
—David Hockney
Topics: Art, Artists, Arts
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Arthur Eddington English Astronomer
William Hogarth English Painter, Engraver
Anthony Hopkins Welsh-American Actor
E. M. Forster English Novelist
Richard Eyre British Director
William Blake English Poet
Leon Battista Alberti Italian Architect
Reginald Horace Blyth British Japanologist
David Attenborough English Naturalist, Broadcaster
Lytton Strachey British Biographer