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
Nobody
Optical
Understanding
Explained
Doesn
Devices
Art
Tool
Ends
Explain
Nothing
Tools
Done
Magic
Made
Creation

More quotes by David Hockney

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The editing of moving pictures is geared toward the single image. You'd have to edit things in new ways.
David Hockney
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It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much.
David Hockney
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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.
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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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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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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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The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We're looking at a document. It gives you clues.
David Hockney
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Anything simple always interests me.
David Hockney
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You must plan to be spontaneous.
David Hockney
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I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.
David Hockney
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Painting and drawing has been here for 35,000 years.
David Hockney
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I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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...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.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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I'm rather shocked by what I thought was simple mindedness actually. I thought they're not looking, they're not actually looking.
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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Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.
David Hockney