Quote

I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful.

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
Make
Looking
Process
Beautiful
Thing
Believe

More quotes by David Hockney

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As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.
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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Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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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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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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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.
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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In fact, I'm a bit of a slob, but I've always said my excuse, I have a higher sense of order, I can see it where others can't. That's my excuse for slobbery, I must admit, but I think it's a good one.
David Hockney
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Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.
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 avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.
David Hockney
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No matter what the illusion created, it is a flat canvas and it has to be organized into shapes.
David Hockney
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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.
David Hockney
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Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.
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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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?
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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The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.
David Hockney
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The cameras are getting smaller, they're getting more versatile, and eventually, I'm sure you'll have a camera with lots and lots of things on it so you can alter the picture. You could alter perspective.
David Hockney