Art Report:David Hockney

David Hockney mixes reality with creative art magnificantly! His versatility in his work proves he is an artist of many talents.
In 1974, Hockney was the subject of Jack Hazan's film, A Bigger Splash (named after one of Hockney's swimming pool paintings from 1967).

In 1977 David Hockney authored a book of etchings called The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso. The etchings were inspired by and represented the themes of Stevens' poem, "The Man With The Blue Guitar", which accompanied the art. It was published as a portfolio and as a book in spring 1997 by Petersburg Press.[7]

Hockney was commissioned to design the cover and a series of pages for the December 1985 issue of the French edition of Vogue. Consistent with his interest in cubism and admiration for Pablo Picasso, Hockney chose to paint Celia Birtwell (who appears in several of his works) from different views, as if the eye had scanned her face diagonally.

In December 1985, Hockney was commissioned to draw with the Quantel Paintbox, a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch directly onto the screen. Using this program was similar to drawing on the PET film for prints, with which he'd had much experience. The resulting work was featured in a BBC series profiling a number of artists.

His A Bigger Grand Canyon, a series of 60 paintings that combined to produce one enormous picture, was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million.
A Bigger Grand Canyon

On 21 June 2006, his painting of The Splash fetched £2.6 million - a record for a Hockney painting.[8]

In October 2006 the National Portrait Gallery in London organized one of the largest ever displays of Hockney's portraiture work, including 150 of his paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks and photocollages from over five decades. The collection ranged from his earliest self-portraits to work completed in 2005.[9] Hockney himself assisted in displaying the works, and the exhibition, which ran until January 2007, proved to be one of the most successful in the gallery's history.


In June 2007, Hockney's largest painting, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which measures 15x40', was hung in the Royal Academy's largest gallery in their annual Summer Exhibition.[10] This work "is a monumental-scale view of a coppice in Hockney's native Yorkshire, between Bridlington and York. It was painted on 50 individual canvases, mostly working in situ, over five weeks last winter."[11] In 2008, he donated this work to the Tate Gallery in London, saying: "I thought if I'm going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It's going to be here for a while. I don't want to give things I'm not too proud of...I thought this was a good painting because it's of England...it seems like a good thing to do".[12]

Since 2009, Hockney has painted hundreds of portraits, still lifes and landscapes using the Brushes iPhone[13] and iPad[14] application, often sending them to his friends.[14]

Many of Hockney's works are now housed in a converted industrial building called Salts Mill, (in Saltaire), near his home town of Bradford. Wiki
hockneypictures.com