David Hockney: Likeness

“He was a member of CND and a socialist with a rather romantic and naive idea of what Soviet Russia was like, all cornfields and ballet.”

David Hockney

Interview with Nigel Farndale, "The talented Mr. Hockney," The Telegraph, (15 November 2001)
2000s
Context: He [Hockney's father] hardly ever left Bradford. He was a member of CND and a socialist with a rather romantic and naive idea of what Soviet Russia was like, all cornfields and ballet. He would have gone mad for email because he was always sending letters to world leaders — Eisenhower, Mao, Stalin — telling them what was what. I think he imagined the Politburo would hold up his letter and say, "Hold everything, Kenneth Hockney has written again!"

Idea

“Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.”

David Hockney

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981) , p. 112
1980s
Context: When conventions are old, there's quite a good reason, it's not arbitrary. So Picasso discovered that, as it were, and I'm sure that for him that was probably almost as exciting as discovering Cubism, rediscovering conventions of ordinary appearance, one-point perspective or something. The purists think you're going backwards, but I know you'd go forward. Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same. The Renaissance is not the same as ancient Greece; the Gothic revival is not the same as Gothic. It might look like that at first, but you can tell it's not. The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.

Art , Appearance , Future

“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.”

David Hockney

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981), p. 207
1980s

Drawing , Painting

“How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't. There's a hierarchy. Why do I pick out that thing, that thing, that thing?”

David Hockney

Interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration," Boston Globe (26 February 2006)
2000s

Learning

“Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.”

David Hockney

Interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration," Boston Globe (26 February 2006)
2000s