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I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

David Hockney

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David Hockney
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 9
Collagist
Draftsperson
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Lithographer
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Scenographer
Sculptor
Bradford
Yorkshire
Picasso
Century
Greatest
Doubt
Without
Think
Thinking

More quotes by David Hockney

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I've never been interested in, much in the politics of the art world, it doesn't interest me.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.
David Hockney
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There's no need to believe what an artist says. Believe what he does that's what counts.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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The pictures on the walls aren't like movies. They don't move, they don't talk, and they'll last longer. They will last longer.
David Hockney
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In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders.
David Hockney
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You must plan to be spontaneous.
David Hockney
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When you're very young, you suddenly find this marvellous freedom. It's quite exciting, and you're prepared to do anything.
David Hockney
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There would be no bohemia without smoking.
David Hockney
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I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.
David Hockney
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It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are.
David Hockney
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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,'
David Hockney
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I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.
David Hockney
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An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.
David Hockney
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We don't all see the same way at all. Even if I'm sitting looking at you, there is always the memory of you as well. And a memory is now. So someone who's never met you before is seeing a different person. That's bound to be the case. We all see something different. I assume most people don't look very hard at anything.
David Hockney
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It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.
David Hockney