David Hockney
Born – Bradford, England 1937
David Hockney delights in contradictions. His name is synonymous with slick acrylic or coloured pencil portraits, renditions of still life, or variations on the theme of men in showers, as seen here in the stylized Man Taking a Shower in Beverly Hills, and swimming pools with spaghetti-like reflections. In the early 1960s, Hockney was an innovative student at The Royal College of Art. He delved into Pop Art, going against the tide of Abstraction from the US, which threatened to engulf art production in Britain. His larger painting projects were concerned more overtly with the major preoccupations of his early work. These were notably, his homosexuality and his absorption in the work and ideas of other artists, particularly Debuffet, Bacon and Kitaj, who was an early associate at the Royal College of Art, and the writers Walt Whitman and Cavafy. Hockney had a fear of repetition and did not maintain allegiance to stylistic unity. In the 1980s his photographic works exemplified his enquiry into the nature of visual reality, incorporating Cubist ideology and questioning the Renaissance view of perspective. Subsequently he has worked with optical devices such as the camera obscura, exploring their use in the past and exploring them in his own art.
Masterpieces:
- We Two Boys Together Clinging
- Mr & Mrs Clark and Percy
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About david hockney
David Hockney: A Bigger Picture
Marco Livingstone
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Hockney's Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective
Gregory Evans
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A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney
Martin Gayford
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