100+ David Hockney Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - "David Hockney: 'Just because I'm cheeky, doesn't mean I'm not serious'". Interview With Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2015.

Topics: Mean, Serious, Cheeky

Nature, never, never let's you down, it's not a cliché, nature isn't a cliché, pictures might be, but you can get tired of pictures.

source: - BBC John Tusa Interview, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Tired, Might

Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.

source: - "Interview: “John Tusa Interviews David Hockney” (2004)". Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Photography, Thinking, Europe, Matisse, Cubism

I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.

Topics: Thinking, Greedy, Burden, Exciting Life

I've always been a looker. Loads of people say, "I never saw that" - but that's what artists do.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Artist, People, Saws

...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.

source: - Lawrence Weschler, David Hockney, Getty Foundation (2008). “True to life: twenty-five years of conversations with David Hockney”, Univ of California Pr

Topics: Photography, Art, Taken

About shadows: do we see shadows? Loads of people don't. A camera will notice a shadow, but how many people have got a shadow in front of them when they take a picture and don't notice it, and then they see it in the photograph because the photograph will catch the shadow.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: People, Shadow, Cameras

There's no need to believe what an artist says. Believe what he does; that's what counts.

Topics: Believe, Artist, Doe

My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.

Topics: Worry, Doing Nothing, Painting

How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't.

source: - "David Hockney Keeps Seeking New Avenues of Exploration". Interview with Mark Feeney, archive.boston.com. February 26, 2006.

Topics: Cameras, Difficult, Effects

People from the village come up and tease me: 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,'

Topics: Drawing, People, Village, Tease Me

I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.

source: - Lawrence Weschler, David Hockney, Getty Foundation (2008). “True to life: twenty-five years of conversations with David Hockney”, Univ of California Pr

Topics: Photograph, Said, Surface

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.

Topics: Mean, Space, People

Photoshop came out of painting, and now it's going back to painting.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Painting, Photoshop

Photography hankers after the condition of the neutral observer. But there can be no such things as a neutral observer. For something to be seen, it must be looked at by somebody, and any true and real depiction must be an account of the experience of that looking.

source: - Lawrence Weschler, David Hockney, Getty Foundation (2008). “True to life: twenty-five years of conversations with David Hockney”, Univ of California Pr

Topics: Photography, Real, Depiction

Everything does come from nature. That's where you get new ideas. Just draw the landscape. I felt doing it with a bit of burnt wood was also good because I was drawing burnt wood with a piece of wood. I wanted to do black and white. After using color, I thought black and white would be good. You can have color in black and white. There is color in them, actually.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Black And White, Color, Ideas

I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.

source: - Interview with Charlie Scheips, www.harpersbazaar.com. Novemebr 21, 2011.

Topics: Thinking, Seeing

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

source: - The Observer, June 09, 1991.

Topics: Artist, Age, Way

But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Mean, Thinking, Make You Think

I've always been interested in space in pictures. I think my going deaf increased my spatial sense, because I can't get the direction of sound. I feel that I see space very clearly, and that's because I can't hear it. So it's a compensatory thing.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Thinking, Space, Sound

People tell me they open my e-mails first, because they aren't demands and you don't need to reply. They're simply for pleasure.

Topics: People, Needs, Demand

No matter what the illusion created, it is a flat canvas and it has to be organized into shapes.

source: - David Hockney (1977). “David Hockney”, Harry N Abrams Inc

Topics: Shapes, Matter, Canvas

I feel 30. [Publo] Picasso said he always felt 30. Well, I do.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Said, Wells, Feels

I think we're in a very exciting time - visually, I think we are. I've not got a crystal ball. I'm not saying I know what the future is at all. In some ways I'm getting quite pessimistic about the future, but in other ways I think it might get better. We are moving into very big changes.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Moving, Thinking, Get Better, Crystal Ball, Big Changes

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art.

Topics: Art, Men, Chinese, Chinese Proverb

Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Hard Work, Thinking, Artist, Working All The Time

Water colours are wet colours in water.

Topics: Water, Colour, Wet

I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.

Topics: Talking, Listening, Save Me

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

Topics: Feds, Fed Up

The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see.

Topics: Thinking, Important, Realizing

Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.

source: - "David Hockney". Book by David Hockney, 1981.

Topics: Art, Future, Looks

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

source: - www.thrillist.com.

Topics: Drawing, Sketching, Lines

No one has ever asked to see my degree certificate.

Topics: Education, Degrees, Certificates

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Mean, Thinking, Painting

Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere.

source: - David Hockney (1978). “Travels with Pen, Pencil and Ink”

Topics: Strong, Swimming, Men, Swimming Pool

It's all one to me: opera, painting, drawing, faxes.

Topics: Drawing, Design, Fax

If you like music you like silence actually.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Silence, Ifs

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

Topics: Artist, Challenges, Want

Perspective is a law of optics... The Chinese did not have a system like it. Indeed, it is said they rejected the idea of the vanishing point in the eleventh century, because it meant the viewer was not there, indeed, had no movement, therefore was not alive.

Topics: Law, Ideas, Perspective, Vanishing Point, Optics

With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!

source: - "'Photography is Crumbling'". Interview with Martin Gayford, www.telegraph.co.uk. May 18, 2004.

Topics: Photography, War, Editing

Painting and drawing has been here for 35,000 years.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Years, Drawing, Painting, Painting And Drawing

I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world.

Topics: Views, Individuality, World, Personal Views

I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.

Topics: Ipads, Joy, Letters

Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution.

source: - "David Hockney". Book by Marco Livingstone, 1976.

Topics: Meaningful, Drawing, Lovely, Matisse, Charcoal

The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Photography, Clearing Out, Cameras, History Of Photography

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.

Topics: Rivers, East, Valleys, Yorkshire, Glaciers

You always need a bit of low-tech.You always need a pair of scissors, it seems to me. You can do better things.... The high-tech, somehow, you do have to combine it with low-tech things.

Topics: Needs, Pairs, Lows, Scissors

The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.

source: - "David Hockney". Book by Marco Livingstone, 1976.

Topics: Cameras, Way, Moments

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Photography, Space, Cameras

I was always struck by how Picasso had no interest in music.

source: - "David Hockney: portrait of the old master". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. October 31, 2009.

Topics: Interest

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.

source: - David Hockney, Paul Joyce (1988). “Hockney on photography: conversations with Paul Joyce”, Harmony

Topics: Moving, Different, Television, Collages

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

Topics: Moving, Race, Drawing

When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'

Topics: Mistake, Mean, Wish, Previous Work

Dawn is about luminosity and so is the iPhone... The little drawings of the dawn are done while I'm still in bed... If you're in my kind of business you'd be a fool to sleep through that... Artists can't work office hours, can they?

Topics: Sleep, Artist, Iphone, Office Hours

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?

Topics: Photography, Reality, Men

What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they paint shadows in European art? Shadows are because of optics. Optics need shadows and strong light. Strong light makes the deepest shadows. It took me a few years to realize fully that the art historians didn't grasp that. There are a lot of interesting new things, ideas, pictures.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Art, Strong, Light, Optics

I have never really done any teaching and maybe I should have done. I am not power-mad enough.

Topics: Teaching, Should Have, Mad

The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway - it is called medication.

source: - "Interview: Jasper Gerard meets David Hockney". www.thetimes.co.uk. October 02, 2005.

Topics: People, Choices, Drug, Illegal Drugs

When you're very young, you suddenly find this marvellous freedom. It's quite exciting, and you're prepared to do anything.

Topics: Freedom, Young, Exciting

I believe that the problem of how you depict something is a formal problem. It's an interesting one and it's a permanent one; there's no solution to it. There are a thousand and one ways you can go about it. There's no set rule.

source: - David Hockney (1977). “David Hockney”, Harry N Abrams Inc

Topics: Believe, Interesting, Way

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

source: - BBC John Tusa Interview, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Artist, Might, Hedonism, Hedonist

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Crafts, Teach, Wells

Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't have been seen by peasants and its importance would have been diminished.

Topics: Christian, Art, Messages, Cubism

I never talk when I'm drawing a person, especially if I'm making line drawings. I prefer there to be no noise at all so I can concentrate more.

source: - David Hockney (1977). “David Hockney”, Harry N Abrams Inc

Topics: Drawing, Silence, Lines

OH, I LIKE smoking, I do. I smoke for my health, my mental health. Tobacco gives you little pauses, a rest from life. I don't suppose anyone smoking a pipe would have road rage, would they?

Topics: Giving, Smoking, Littles, Road Rage, Smoking A Pipe

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

source: - David Hockney, Paul Joyce (1988). “Hockney on photography: conversations with Paul Joyce”, Harmony

Topics: People, Interesting, Doubt

On the iPhone I tended to draw with my thumb. Whereas the moment I got to the iPad, I found myself using every finger.

Topics: Ipads, Iphone, Thumbs

I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.

Topics: Years, Nhs, People, National Service

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.

Topics: Thinking, Deafness, Ifs

I was never that interested in movies. I was interested in them as a thing, but I didn't want to make movies. I always wanted to draw and paint.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Want, Paint, Draws

I'm really only interested in technology that is about pictures. I'm interested in anything that makes a picture.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Technology

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

source: - "David Hockney: a life in art". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. January 13, 2012.

Topics: Family, Independent

I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume - there's a flatness to them.

source: - "Sunlight, beaches and boys" by Edmund White, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2006.

Topics: Drawing, Missing, Cameras, Flatness

Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Years, Drawing, Actors, Movie Actors, Painting And Drawing

I think probably something big can be done with cameras, I'm not saying, er, I'm saying chemical photography's finished, that means you can't have a Cartier Bresson again, you need never believe pictures.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Photography, Believe, Mean, Cartier

I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Photography

Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?

Topics: Diploma, Painting, Painter

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

source: - "The Talented Mr Hockney". Interview with Nigel Farndale, www.telegraph.co.uk. November 15, 2001.

Topics: Tree, Remember, Sometimes, Palm Trees

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

Topics: Photography, Certain, Painter

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

source: - David Hockney (1977). “David Hockney”, Harry N Abrams Inc

Topics: Art, Matter, Painting

I thought the iPhone was great, but this takes it to a new level - simply because it's eight times the size of the iPhone, as big as a reasonably-sized sketchbook... Anyone who likes drawing and mark-making will like to explore new media.

Topics: Technology, Media, Drawing, Sketchbooks

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.

Topics: Spring, Space, Tree, Early Spring

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.

Topics: Thinking, Style, Cubism

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.

Topics: Fashion, Usual, World, Depiction

Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face.

Topics: Beauty, Hate, Artist, Pretty Picture, Pretty Face

Time is the great mystery anyway. And it's still the great mystery in the moving picture as well.

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Moving, Mystery, Wells

I love California; everything is so artificial.

Topics: Love, California, Artificial

There are enough no smoking places now.

Topics: Marijuana, Smoking, Enough, No Smoking

It's difficult to talk about colour, even remember colour actually.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Remember, Difficult, Colour

Paint something every day.

Topics: Habit, Paint

It's time to debate images, especially when someone's going to prison for downloading them.

source: - "Disposable cameras". Interview with Jonathan Jones, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2004.

Topics: Debate, Prison

The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We're looking at a document. It gives you clues.

source: - "Interview: “John Tusa Interviews David Hockney” (2004)". Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Mean, Giving, Clue

I never work with music. I hate background music, always did. I only like music in the foreground, meaning, deliberately listen to it, actually.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

Topics: Hate, Backgrounds, Background Music, Foreground

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Space, Bigs, Knows

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Hollywood, Bradford, Wells

I usually only draw myself in down periods... I suppose that's why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, 'Let's have a look in the mirror.' When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don't, do you?

Topics: Thinking, Mirrors, Looks

A lot of people, given the chance, would blow up everything, and you and me.

source: - "Disposable cameras". Interview with Jonathan Jones, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2004.

Topics: Blow, People, Chance, Given A Chance

On the 31st of October 2011 year, I had a mini-stroke. I couldn't finish my sentences. So I went to the doctor. It was a tiny one. The speech came back in a month or so. I did notice I could draw even better, I felt. I was concentrating more. And I wasn't talking much, but I was drawing. I said, "Well, I don't have to talk much."

source: - Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

Topics: Doctors, Talking, Years, Talking Much

What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.

source: - Peter Webb, David Hockney (1988). “Portrait of David Hockney”, London : Chatto & Windus

Topics: Artist, Able, Paint

Britain is a very small country with a very large press.

Topics: Country, Britain, Small Countries

I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.

Topics: Enthusiasm, Might, Theater

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.

Topics: Knows, Bits

The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine.

Topics: Mistake, Perspective, World, Combustion, Vanishing Point

If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look... and paint what you see until the canvas ends.

Topics: Nature, Needs, Looks, Naturalism

In my old age, I'll be in L.A.

Topics: Age, Old Age

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

source: - David Hockney, Maurice Tuchman, Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (1988). “David Hockney: a retrospective”, Harry N Abrams Inc

Topics: Ideas, Style, Use, Magpies

In one gallery they actually had a notice which said No Sketching. How obnoxious! I said, How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?

source: - ""Portrait of the Artist as a Naughty Boy"". Interview with John Mortimer, In Character, 1983.

Topics: Wall, Thinking, Sketching

The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when people 'come out' it's quite an exciting moment. It means they become aware of their desires, and can deal with them in a remarkably honest way.

Topics: Art, Mean, People

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

Topics: Photography, Art, People

I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.

Topics: Drawing, Painting, Mediums

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.

source: - Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. 2004.