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David Hockney Quotes
1937–2026 England
David Hockney (9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026) was an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. Resident in California in the mid-to-late 1960s, he was a significant contributor to Pop Art.
England Painters Photographers Also known as: Hockney, David
Random David Hockney quote
21 quotes
When conventions are old, there's quite a good reason, it's not arbitrary.
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.
All art is contemporary, if it's alive. And if it's not alive, what's the point of it?
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.
We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.
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.
Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look.
I think he imagined the Politburo would hold up his letter and say, "Hold everything, Kenneth Hockney has written again!"
Television is becoming a collage — there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.
It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.
In one gallery they actually had a notice which said "No Sketching." How obnoxious! I said, "How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?"
The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.
What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.
How can [Tony] Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.
The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway — it is called medication.
He was a member of CND and a socialist with a rather romantic and naive idea of what Soviet Russia was like, all cornfields and ballet.
I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle... I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.
I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.
How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't. There's a hierarchy. Why do I pick out that thing, that thing, that thing?
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