John Tusa Interview with David Hockney-Photomontage

I’m going to take you forward from that a bit to one of the dominant media of your life that is your use of the camera. At the very beginning, and I think you started playing with a camera in the 1970s, why did you do it? Were you trying to fix images in your mind, or what was the attraction of the camera?

Because I’m interested in depiction, representation, therefore you’re interested in photography. You don’t ignore it. What is it? Does the world look like that? Most people think it does, even I did then. But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time; I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years. It all took me back to the hands actually, that’s what it did, but it took a long time, er.

But at the time, was there any sense that, I mean it wasn’t developing your visual memory was it?

I probably would just take some little snaps at first, but as I began to go into it, I got more and more fascinated, but it took me a long time to understand this, I must say. And remember, I was in Hollywood.

It would have been strange not to use a camera, in Hollywood?

Well, I must tell you this. When I arrived there, even people there used to say this was a cultural wasteland, and I thought well, some of the great works of art of the twentieth century were made there, actually. Were City Lights, I mentioned, I thought, a lot of them I thought were actually works of art, pictures. They took picture making seriously. I mean meaning there was a side of it. I got to know technical people there, meaning the people who look through cameras, and things, actually making the pictures.

Did that help you change the way in which, how you constructed images, pictures?

Not in the sixties, when I was first there in the sixties, er, I used to go back and forth really. I never had a place, I’d just rent another, it was always easy in LA, just drive round the streets, you’d see for rent sign, it was very, very easy. In London I’d to keep the place in Palace Terrace, you know, you couldn’t come back to London and just see a ‘for rent’ sign there, and do it, so I didn’t get a house till the end of the seventies.

And that was when you produced these large photo collages of a realistic scene, one I remember is the lunch at the British Ambassador’s residence in Tokyo.

Well I started making collage photographs because I realised you could make a different space, you’re putting in time, and they began to be different and you got a different space. I got fascinated by that, actually, and spent a good few months just using, making complex Polaroid photographs, which are far more complex to make than they look.

Oh, I’ve never thought they were anything other than very complicated.

And what was interesting was, I knew it was a bit like drawing and painting. When you began I didn’t know where the edge would be, whereas most people looking through a camera it’s the edge that defines everything, so they grew outwards, it was fascinating, and I realised we see that way, we see in bits. And I realised you could even alter perspective, er.

Because each image gives you rather a different perspective?

Yes, each one is a different one. And I began to be interested in perspective which is a fascinating subject, most people thought it was just in nature, practically, whereas it’s not of course. But it seemed as though photography confirmed western perspective and so on. But actually that’s where it came from, optics, or so I found out later. It wasn’t confirming it, that’s..

But if I can just stay with that photo collage of Lunch at the British Embassy, because it’s a big work, it must be about eight feet by six feet or something, with a few hundred images, which presumably must all have been taken at one sitting.

Yes they were.

And therefore the question of you putting them together was just extraordinary.

And you think, this is what I thought was happening. You think you are sitting at this table. I knew in any photograph normally, you’re not quite connected with it, there’s a gap between you and the world actually, there’s an edge and that’s what the camera does. I was breaking that, meaning you could decide where the edges were like in drawing or painting. I got fascinated with it. What could you do with it. It led eventually to secret knowledge, it did, and that’s where it got me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/hockney_transcript.shtml

http://www.cs.cmu.edu

John Tusa Interview with David Hockney-Use of light

Now, you left the Royal College 1962. In 1964 you went on your first trip to Los Angeles, and one of the reasons you gave was you thought the light was marvelous and you said you realised there were no long shadows in Bradford. This is a wonderful phrase. So was it the light that really took you?

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood. Hollywood was at the end of the street in a cinema, and I must tell you I did notice, er, my father was a great fan of Laurel and Hardy, well so was I, actually. But I did notice in the films, that even if they were wearing an overcoat, they cast strong shadows on the ground. Well you didn’t do that in Bradford, there were no strong shadows…

Well there was no sun, no sun was there?

That means, that means it was very, very sunny, and I noticed that, even in the black and white films. Shadows sometimes people don’t see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures; oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.

Was it the sun, or the effect of the sun, could be different things, which really drew you to California.

Well it’s the effect of the sun actually. Um, that it was light, what I didn’t know at the time, another thing, I didn’t know this, I also said it was sexy, it was actually, meaning in a hotter place people have less clothes, er and so on, er don’t need an overcoat in LA. What I didn’t know was I was deeply attracted to the big space. I’m a bit claustrophobic, I know that now. Er whereas New York is claustrophobic, LA is big, wide, one storey. The reason LA is very brightly lit at night, if you’ve ever been there and looked down on it, is just one simple reason it’s like that. The street lights are twice as high as the buildings, which they’re not in London, so if on Hampstead Heath you look down on London, you don’t see the street lights. But if you look down on LA from Mulholland Drive or a plane, you do.

So you like the light.

Simple, it’s a simple thing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/hockney_transcript.shtml

http://www.americansabbatical.com

David Hockney Joiners

David Hockney has often been regarded as a playboy of the art world. He has had lascivious relationships, and he has run among strange and crazy artistic circles. Yet he has always retained a sense of stability in his life through his constant and tireless devotion to his work. Hockney is an artist that has always enjoyed success and praise, facing little to no hardship in his career. What is interesting about his life is not the problems he has encountered, but the strides he has taken to bypass much human suffering.

http://www.davidhockney.com/bio (republished from brain-juice.com)

David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1937, the 4th of 5 children.

By the time he was ten, David knew he wanted to be an artist, so when he won a scholarship to go to Bradford Grammar School he was less than delighted – he would have preferred to go directly into an art college.

He finished school, though, and went on to Bradford Art College. From there, he went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London. David was awarded a Gold medal when he completed his diploma there.

Throughout the 60’s, David’s art career grew and grew. Always absorbed in his work, he drew, painted and etched for long hours each day, had many exhibitions and won scholarships – one of which led him to the USA. Since then, the most prestigious galleries across the world have devoted countless shows to his extraordinary work.

David bought a home and studio in California in 1970’s, but returned to visit his family in Bradford at least twice a year – he spent just 3 Christmases apart from his mother Laura during her lifetime. These days, David spends much of his time in this part of the world and his paintings of the East Yorkshire landscape are admired world-wide.

The original text can be found here on the Salts Mill galleries website. I have been to the Salts Mill gallery, and I really enjoy spending an afternoon browsing the Hockney joiners they have on display. They also have some of his opera sets too, but as I am a photographer his photography grabs my attention more. I have been to the museam twice and both times have come back with inspiration. Theres something about Hockney’s joiners that I really enjoy.

I chose to research David Hockney because I really enjoy his joiners and want to try to create some in my work. I have always liked David Hockney’s work ever since I first researched him for my own joiner back in College. I believe that even if many people copy his technique, they can never create what Hockney did. As your eyes follow each part of his images, the perspective changes just as it would in real life. Hockney also does this with his painting, which I can admit I don’t like as much with the garish colours and less than life-like pictures, but it gives a sense of surrealism in his work. And I hope to maybe one day capture this in my work.