Online Encyclopedia
David Hockney
David Hockney (born July 9, 1937) is a British artist, based in California. His work is largely personal and autobiographical, with his paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles among his best known pieces.
Hockney was born in Bradford and educated at Bradford Grammar School and the Royal College of Art in London where he met R. B. Kitaj. He became associated with pop art, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon. Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a poem by Walt Whitman, these works make reference to his homosexuality.
Later, a visit to California, where he settled, inspired Hockney to make a series of oil paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles. These are executed in a more realistic style and use vibrant colours. He also made prints, portraits of friends, and stage design s for Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Hockney also worked with photography, or to be exact - photocollaging. Using varying numbers (~5-150) of small polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject, hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because these photos are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work which has an affinity with cubism, affinity which was some of Hockney's major aims - discussing the way the human vision works. Some of these pieces are landscapes, others portraits.
In the 2001 television programme and book, Secret Knowledge, Hockney posited that the so-called Old Masters had used a series of lenses or mirrors to project an image of their models onto the canvas, which they had then traced around, enabling them to achieve very high levels of realism. A petition to air the other side of the story (that old masters and living masters achieve perfect realism without optical aids) is accepting signatures at http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/debunking_david_hockney_theory/
In 1974, Hockney was the subject of Jack Hazan 's film, A Bigger Splash (named after one of Hockney's swimming pool paintings from 1967). Hockney was made a Companion of Honour in 1997 and is also a Royal Academician. Many of Hockney's works are now housed in the old mill Salts Mill in Saltaire, near his home town of Bradford.