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| An English countryside plain air painting from 2005. Hockney says "It's only having seen a tree's inner structure, with it's branches laid bare in winter that one learns to experience, and then to render, that tree's subsequent summer fullness- and then vice versa." image above and below from here |
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Hockney, a California based English artist is considered one of the most influential British Pop Artists of the 1960's.
The first art piece by
David Hockney I saw in person was at the
Modern Museum of Art Fort Worth. It was where I first saw a lot of important contemporary modern artists, including Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, and Francis Bacon. They have Hockney's
Adhesiveness, 1960 in their permanent collection, and if you are ever in the area, make sure you visit this museum and the
Kimball Art Museum, across the way. Both are world class, and I'm not just saying that because we Texans are proud of ourselves.
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| Adhesiveness, 1960, MMoA Fort Worth |
Hockney, born in London, received traditional training in art school, based on life drawing, portraits and cityscapes. After art school he enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London, where he learned under artists such as Ruskin Spear and Francis Bacon.
In the early 1960's, Hockney sees the Picasso exhibit at the Tate Gallery and takes part in a junior competition and wins. Here he meets an art dealer who becomes his model. He reads Walt Whitman and paints Adhesiveness, which is the painting in the MMoA Fort Worth's permanent collection. He becomes well known as a Pop-Artist. It is during the period of the late 1960's that he takes a more traditional manner to his art, making heavy and realistic portraits. He spends much of his time in California, hence the swimming pools of L.A. is often seen in many of his works and considered one of his themes. He painted the sea, sun, water, young men, and luxury with such depth that it created an entirely new naturalistic dimension to his work.
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| Beverly Hills Housewife (1966), oil on 2 6 feet canvas. The woman in the painting is Betty Freeman (who was the owner of the painting as well). The collector is standing on her patio, near a zebra chaise and an abstract sculpture and is part of Hockney's series called "California Dreaming", which he created in L.A. in the late 1960's. This painting which has always been in private collection recently sold at auction for $7.9 million USD. |
In 1970 Hockney has his first retrospective in London. It was in the 1970's when Hockney did his Blue Guitar Series, as well as many more abstract expressionist/realist paintings. During this decade he came to be a stage designer, doing set and costume designs for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1975 and 1978.
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| Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural, oil painting, 1970 |
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| Subjects for Hockney's portraits were often members of his family, friends, and often he himself. His parents sat for many of his paintings. |
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| (Photo: Reuters / Dylan Martinez) |
In the 1980's Hockney started experiencing with camera and large format photography. This is when he started doing photomontages, in print as well as to paint.
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Hockney holding his Pentax camera in his studio in London, 1983. Having devoted two years to photography, this second week back in London he starts returning to painting.
Image: Shapersofthe80s |
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| Hockney refers to his photomontage works at "the joiners" where he took Polaroids of one subject and arranged them into a grid layout. |
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Hockney's studio in 1984 with a new work in production, looking to be much influenced by Picasso.
Image by Shapersofthe80s |
1990's- NOW: After all of Hockney's experimentation with digital imaging, video capture and instant photography, it seemed that Hockney still returns to the paint and brush. But it will never be conventional, that is for sure.
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| above three images: seriouswheels.com |
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| "I draw flowers everyday on my iPhone and send them to my friends, so they get fresh flowers every morning. And my flowers last. Not only can I draw them as if in a little sketchbook, I can also send them to 15 or 20 people who then get them that morning when they wake up" says Hockney, quoted from here. |
Hockney also uses the iPad to create images of plants and cut flowers. He has created hundreds of landscapes, self-portraits, and still-lifes. More than 200 of these images were on display at the Foundation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris. (from
here)
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| image: AP |
