Quote

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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David Hockney
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 9
Collagist
Draftsperson
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Lithographer
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Scenographer
Sculptor
Bradford
Yorkshire
Doesn
Devices
Art
Tool
Ends
Explain
Nothing
Tools
Done
Magic
Made
Creation
Nobody
Optical
Understanding
Explained

More quotes by David Hockney

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Anything simple always interests me.
David Hockney
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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.
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.
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The only people who need degrees are dentists and brain surgeons.
David Hockney
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I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair.
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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I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.
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With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well.
David Hockney
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The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.
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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No one has ever asked to see my degree certificate.
David Hockney
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Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'
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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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.
David Hockney
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I have never really done any teaching and maybe I should have done. I am not power-mad enough.
David Hockney
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I'm sure that the camera is part of European art.
David Hockney
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It's difficult to talk about colour, even remember colour actually.
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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It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.
David Hockney
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If you like music you like silence actually.
David Hockney