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
photography art taken
...all along I've had an ambivalent relationship to photography - but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a craft, or a technique, well, I've always been taken with Henry Geldzahler's answer to that question when he said, I thought it was a hobby.
taken garden kyoto
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
taken ordinary use
But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't.
creating drive health pubs suburban
Pubs aren't health clubs. To me, we're creating a suburban dreariness that would drive me mad.
becoming bit channels collage move sees television
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.
quite
Well, I was amazed, really. I mean, only because of the other company. I was quite amazed.
technology
I go and see anything that's visually new, any technology that's about picture-making. The technology won't make the pictures different, but someone using it will.
I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn.
nature
To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature.
Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.
people
I generally only paint people I know, I'm not a flatterer really.
I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.
I paint what I like, when I like and where I like.
bring drive family liked mean perhaps quite
I think my father would have liked to have been an artist, actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or, I don't know, I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.