I have just finished reading the second volume of Christopher Simon Sykes' biography of David Hockney, subtitled A Pilgrim's Progress. It is a book that needs short bursts of total immersion in order fully to appreciate Hockney's obsessive enthusiasm in his pursuit to find out about and try.
As with Picasso, I have found following the curiosity, the single-minded seeking, and the exhaustive trying, practising, achieving, infectious - always filling me with a need to do something creative.
Whether it is his many painting series, the prints, the stage designs, the paper pulp images, the photographic collages, the fax pictures,
the camera lucida portraits, the iphone and ipad images, the films,
I certainly enjoyed a recent film following him as he worked on his landscape paintings outdoors: "A Bigger Picture". Inspiring life of an artist, always at work.
ReplyDeleteMarja-Leena, Hockney is such a good communicator about his work and his thinking too. I agree that films and programmes about him are really rewarding.
DeleteOlga, in your post you have articulated exactly how I feel about David Hockney - a truly extraordinary artist.
ReplyDeleteEirene, I think he must have galvanized a great deal of creativity.
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