David Hockney
David Hockney
b. 1937
The works of David Hockney are defined by a rigorous dedication to renewing the possibilities of figurative art. Born in 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, he was fascinated with colour and brightness since his early childhood. He soon left the bleak and grim landscapes of Norther England for the animated cultural scene of London, graduating from the Royal Academy of Art. In 1964 he moved to Los Angeles, whose sunlit landscapes helped him cultivate his love of colour and luminosity. Here he began his iconic series of swimming pools, which capture the momentary nature of splashing water like handmade photographs. Producing artworks to this day, Hockney experiments in a vast range of traditional and non-traditional media, such as fax and iPad art, combining in his vibrant compositions emotive affects and dynamic forms.
At a time when artists were flocking to New York to practice abstraction and Pop Art, David Hockney boldly left for California to practice figuration, a style then considered old news. Hockney’s oeuvre defines a lifelong dedication to imbuing life and innovation into his figurative works on personal subjects. He does this through simultaneously experimenting with new technologies and drawing on techniques from art history. Having since moved from his beloved California to Normandy, Hockney continues to prove the wide-ranging potentials of figuration.
Born in 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, Hockney had an early interest in art and fascination with colour. He later spoke of the bleakness of the landscape, referring to Bradford as a very black city covered in soot. Van Gogh would leave an important mark on young Hockney who, when he first saw the Dutch master’s paintings at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1954, struggled to believe that the brightly coloured landscapes were realistic.
Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art in London where he won the Royal College of Art gold medal. Following graduation, he moved to Los Angeles in 1964, the place he would call home for the next 40 years. For Hockney, LA was ‘the promised land’ where people live a laid-back lifestyle full of colour and sunlight. Here, his love for colour would explode, with his use of bubble gum pink, cerulean and sea green, among others, considered comparable to that of the French masters Pierre Bonnard and Matisse.
It was in LA that he began his most iconic series: swimming pools. This includes ‘Bigger Splash’ which captures the moment after a figure hits the water. Using the manual art of painting, Hockney nonetheless captured the momentary nature of a splash of water in a manner comparable to photography. In fact, Hockney considers photography an important tool in depicting reality. He uses photographs, be they his own or otherwise, to remember the details of a scene which he then reorganises and adds additional information.
Hockney has experimented in a vast range of traditional and non-traditional mediums, including printmaking, faxing and iPad art. In 2008 Hockney began painting flowers using the Brushes app on his iPad, which he would then send to his friends, stating that it allowed him to send them ‘fresh flowers every morning’. The iPad continues to be a medium that allows Hockney to simplify his artistic practice as well as challenge mainstream art practices such as traditional distribution.
Hockney refers to his work as a ‘history of pictures’ in that he draws influence from artists, aesthetics and techniques across art history. He attributes his flat representation and careful arrangement of people to ancient Egypt, balanced composition and bright colours to the Old Masters, the gestural painting to depict action to the Abstract Expressionists and use of lighting to Hollywood, among other influences.
Hockney distils hundreds of centuries worth of influence into his minimal, yet colourful compositions depicting subjects such as swimming pools, his parents, friends, boyfriends, bedrooms and landscapes. His work is concise yet emotional, with a style that has the capability to capture both the flatness of ancient Egypt and the movement of the Abstract Expressionists.
THE YOSEMITE SUITE
David Hockney
David Hockney’s love of California’s colour and atmosphere is captured in ‘The Yosemite Suite’. During trips to Yosemite National Park in 2010 and 2011, Hockney used the Brushes app on his iPad to capture the surrounding scenery.
For Hockney, the iPad is the plein air painter’s dream; ‘you can set up a palette very, very quickly indeed — quicker than any other medium’. Even more so, Hockney refers to the iPad as ‘an endless sheet of paper’ that holds colour ‘literally at your fingertip’. Therefore, the iPad provided Hockney with the immediacy he desired to depict the vast landscapes before him.
In 2010, Hockney produced over 20 vibrant drawings, depicting the trees, cabins and peaks of the park. ‘Untitled No. 1’ portrays a distant mountain in the background with a cabin in the foreground and what seems to be sketchily drawn walkers. With the movement and sense of specificity of a scene, this drawing appears to have been extracted from a singular moment during his journeys.
These drawings are nonetheless not exact snapshots but are imbued with Hockney’s interpretations of the scenes. This is particularly notable in ‘Untitled No. 5’, a long road flanked by red trees, extending off into the distance. The drawing is somewhat metaphorical and sentimental, recollective of a traveller’s journey through nature. Hockney himself spoke of the individualised landscapes, stating that ‘photographs are very theatrical — they need lighting. My eyes can see more’.
In 2011, Hockney produced another set of iPad drawings on the same subject. Unlike his 2010 prints, Hockney’s 2011 drawings were printed in large format, using size and scale to echo the vastness of the landscapes. This printing choice is yet another example of Hockney’s use of technology to help him capture the breadth and depth of the Californian landscape.
HOMEMADE PRINTS
David Hockney
At a friend’s house in 1986, David Hockney first began experimenting with a new and unconventional means for printing artwork: a copy machine. Realizing that the copy machine ‘was a printing machine and a camera of a new kind’, Hockney employed it for printmaking, his first series in the medium being ‘Homemade Prints’.
Hockney’s use of the copy machine disrupted traditional printmaking, eliminating the painstaking process of producing plates. With the belief that laborious technology can interrupt creativity, Hockney was naturally attracted to the copy machine which permitted spontaneity and last-minute changes. Speaking of the printing medium, Hockney stated ‘this is the closest I’ve ever come in printing to what it’s like to paint’.
Hockney’s process goes as such: each colour is drawn on its own sheet of paper and once a colour has been printed onto each sheet of the edition, all sheets are loaded into the machine once more and another colour is placed onto the copy bed. The result is a paper to paper translation and a sense of depth produced through layering.
The series largely focuses on household scenes rendered in textured reds, blues and greens, counteracting any potential flatness. In ‘Jug on the Table’ the blue table and the red jug appear to have been coloured on top of an underlying texture. Hockney also experimented with the potentials of the copy machine to eliminate colour, as in his black and white print ‘Growing’.
Hockney stated that his use of the copy machine was political, that ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that technology that brought down Communism’, a reference to the Soviet illegalisation of the copy machine to prevent free press. In effect, the value of ‘Homemade Prints’ lies ironically in its easily accessible, traditionally unartistic, medium.
CELIA
David Hockney
David Hockney, a great portrait painter, refuses to produce portraits of subjects he does not know personally. Such stubbornness continuously works in his favour, allowing him to produce portraits imbued with incredible emotion and intimacy, such as those of his friend and lifelong muse, the fashion designer Celia Birtwell.
Hockney first met Celia through her then husband and Hockney’s RCA colleague, Ossie Clark, in the 1960s. After they were sufficiently acquainted, Hockney drew Celia for the first time in 1969 in an apartment in Paris. Celia became a frequent subject of Hockney’s who produced hundreds of works in her likeness, including about 30 prints. Naturally, the more their relationship progressed, the more intimate his portraits of her became.
Hockney’s ‘Celia’ prints are rendered largely colourless. With simple black lines against white paper, his renditions of Celia are at times economical, as in ‘Big Celia 1’ (1982), and other times exceptionally detailed, as in ‘Celia Smoking’ (1973).
The ‘Celia’ series evokes the influences of Matisse and Degas in subject and composition. Celia is often shown in the private, domestic space where she performs routine activities. This is true in ‘Celia Adjusting her Eyelash’ (1979) where Hockney’s friend is shown seated at a vanity, her left hand up to her right eye.
Until 1999, Celia’s likeness can be found not only isolated in domestic spaces but gracing the pages of prints from series such as the ‘Homemade Series’ and the ‘Moving Focus’ series. Her face distorted seemingly inside a canvas in the former and set in a Cubist-like composition in the latter, Celia, the model whose face Hockney was most familiar with, became the likeness of whom he used to experiment with across his ground-breaking career.
THE ARRIVAL OF SPRING IN WOLDGATE
David Hockney
In 2010, David Hockney purchased his first iPad, a curious object that he quickly harnessed in his depictions of the natural world, including the landscapes of ‘The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate’ series. From January to May 2011, Hockney produced iPad drawings that document the transition from winter to spring in the Yorkshire Wolds, a familiar area not far from where he grew up.
Across 94 iPad drawings, Hockney captured wooded roads in bright pinks, greens, yellows, browns and blues. Barring the occasional passing car, these roads are devoid of human presence. Hockney returns to the same scenes across the series in his scientific study of the minute changes identified each time he returns. His obsessive examination of these landscapes has been compared to Monet’s own studies of Giverny.
The iPad was an apt tool for ‘The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate’ as it is inherently simpler than mainstream plein air painting which involves battling the outdoor elements while assembling physical colour palettes. It also offers the ease of change, allowing Hockney to correct anything he perceived to be mistake without leaving behind a trace.
The digital medium leaves a clear mark on the series, notably through the colour palette. Hockney’s unmistakably luminous colours, which remain as such even when printed on paper, recall the light of the tablet screen. Additionally, drawing on the iPad required forward thinking and consideration of the final printed image. In order to translate his tiny tablet image into a larger print, Hockney varied his iPad strokes in size.
Nonetheless, Hockney’s artistic voice found across media is unmistakably heard in this series through the popping colours, the squiggly lines reminiscent of influences like van Gogh and Munch, the perennial fascination with technology and the dedication to a personally meaningful subject.
MY WINDOW
David Hockney
In his series ‘My Window’, David Hockney joined two great loves: changing landscapes and modern technology. Using the Brushes app on his iPhone and iPad, Hockney captured the view from his bedroom window in Bridlington, East Yorkshire from 2009-12.
Hockney was quickly attracted to the spontaneity his iPhone permitted. In his own words, he said ‘there was great advantage in this medium because it’s backlit and I could draw in the dark. I didn’t ever have to get out of bed. Everything I needed was on the iPhone’.
Hockney captured the changing seasons from outside his window, the action created by the weather and the alternating objects that he set in front of it. There are night scenes and day scenes, snowy scenes and glorious sunset scenes, scenes with books and scenes with flowers.
Hockney produced his iPhone works using his thumb. Therefore, with the smallness of the iPhone screen and the comparable size of his thumb, drawings such as ‘Untitled, 470’ (2009) show large brushstrokes and minimal detail.
In 2010, Hockney began drawing on the iPad, using a stylus to produce finer details. Resultingly, these drawings capture raindrops on the window, reflections, distant lights and carefully moulded vegetation. This is true of ‘Untitled, 104’ (2010) in which a carefully rendered flowerpot sits before the window covered in droplets. A blurred reflection of another plant is captured in the window which looks out to the rooftop of the neighbouring house and the construction crane behind it.
These works, though rendered in a painterly nature, are referred to as drawings, a classification that, when paired with their spontaneity, opens the ‘My Window’ series to be interpreted as studies. Hockney himself referred to them as investigations into the interior and exterior spaces, ‘it’s opening up our vision, and how we look’.