David Hockney (physical photographs)
English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England on 9 July 1937. His work is known for its economy of technique, obsession with light, and direct, everyday realism that is influenced by pop art and photography.
Much of Hockney’s subject matter was autobiographical, including portraits and self-portraits and quiet incidental scenes of his friends and his quarters—e.g., Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). The casual elegance and tranquil luminosity of these pieces also predominated in his still lifes. Hockney’s exploration of photography in the 1980s resulted in Pearblossom Hwy., 11–18th April 1986 and other ambitious photocollages. He published several series of graphic works in book form, including illustrations for Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1970) and The Blue Guitar (1977). Hockney also achieved international prominence as a stage-set designer for the opera and ballet. On 15 November 2018, Hockney's 1972 work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at Christie's auction house in New York City for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction. This broke the previous record, set by the 2013 sale of Jeff Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange) for $58.4 million. Hockney held this record until 15 May 2019 when Koons reclaimed the honour selling his Rabbit for more than $91 million at Christie's in New York.
The idea of joiners came to Hockney accidentally. Once he was to paint a terrace and living room in Los Angeles, so he happened to make Polaroid images of the living area and later glued the photos together. It was not in his mind to give this activity a planned composition, it just happened to be that everything harmonised in an unusual way, suggesting a sense of movement in the subject and the outcome narrated that the spectator moved around in the room. This was a discovery on his part, and he began experimenting. He became so engrossed that for a while he kept his talent of painting aside.
David Hockney is highly judgmental about photography, making comments that label photography as being mechanical, unequal to painting and etc. Perhaps a single photo by Hockney wouldn’t have famed as much as his collages. His technique has given a new dimension to photography. In the method of joiners, Hockney is not restricted and he can play around with his subjects in the final composition. In one piece, there are a number of perspectives that make the work of Hockney alive. According to Hockney, painting can offer deep insights about the subject matter in comparison with photography. Despite all these views that Hockney has for photography, many of his works are made with it.
