Saturday, January 23, 2016

A rewarding read

Photo of David Hockney painting in Yorkshire by Christopher Simon Sykes
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,
(image above - Pacific Surf -detail- from here)
the camera lucida portraits, the iphone and ipad images, the films,
even the strange Very New Paintings (image above from here) some of which I was lucky enough to see at an excellent exhibition at the Hayward Gallery many years ago - almost every piece excites me, helps me see more, and impels me to look more.  Even reading about David Hockney gets my mind twitching to get going.

4 comments:

  1. 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.

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    1. Marja-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.

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  2. Olga, in your post you have articulated exactly how I feel about David Hockney - a truly extraordinary artist.

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    1. Eirene, I think he must have galvanized a great deal of creativity.

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