Monday, 24 February 2014

David Hockney on Sky Arts 1



I was watching TV and was flicking through the channels when I saw David Hockney On Photography. Looking at this programme, I learnt many things; Hockney’s photographic and artistic style. During the show, William Boyd’s comments on Hockney’s style “he’s a painter who has taken a series of images with a camera, and rearranged them on a flat surface.” Most of Hockney’s work are photographic collages, that as a whole image depicts a photo of his subject, the way Hockney sees it. Most of the photo collages are taken using a Polaroid camera. I discovered during the programme that Hockney kept an archive of photos that he had taken in photo albums. Hockney explores the idea of a photo in another photo. An example of this is a photo of sunflowers and his own painted version right next to it, this image is called Photography is dead, long live painting. 




Also Hockney’s art does resemble the cubist art style. My favourite piece of art work is of The Grand Canyon, that was based on the photo collage taken in 1982. Hockney was in the exhibition commenting in this particular piece of work by stating, “Immediately, I had finished it, I actually went to The Grand Canyon, again and my immediate reaction was oh my god everything is closer to you in real life here. That’s what the photography has done, pushed it all back. I mean it’s un photographable actually … It’s a spacial experience.” To produce this Hockney used 64 canvasesfrom 64 view points

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From this programme you get an essence of the kind of character and deep theological thinker that Hockney is. When he produces his work it’s very purposeful, that every image that he does has a story and meaning to it. Sadly, Hockney did not continue with photography after the programme was shot. On the whole, I found this programme very useful, and would recommend it to everyone. It not only inspired me to take photos it made me think about photography in a much broader way.
Bibliography

Documentary TV show

David Hockney On Photography, 2009, [TV documentary programme] Sky, Sky Arts 1 HD, 4th Feburary 2014

Images

www.artnet.com – accessed on 19/02/14
http://nga.gov.au/hockney/ - accessed on 19/02/14






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