Hockney, David, 1937–, English painter. Moving from a distorted, semiexpressionist form of pop art pop art, a movement that first emerged in Great Britain at the end of the 1950s as a reaction against the seriousness of abstract expressionism . British and American pop artists employed a common imagery found in comic strips, soup cans, and Coke bottles to express
..... Click the link for more information. , Hockney developed a highly personal realistic style, producing images saturated with color that are witty and uniquely in the moment. Much of his work is also informed by his long-time residence in Southern California, for instance his many joyous paintings of swimmers in undulating, light-struck pools. His superb draftsmanship is evident in his drawings, paintings, illustrated books, and several series of prints, notably The Rake's Progress (1961–63). Hockney is also known for his photographs, his mosaiclike photomontages, and his imaginative stage sets for ballets and operas. His customary subjects include still lifes, portraits, and aspects of homosexual life. Later in his career Hockney became interested in the historical relationship between representational painters and optical devices, maintaining in his book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (2001) and elsewhere that from about 1430 to 1860 many painters in the Western tradition used innovations in visual technology such as lenses, mirrors, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida to produce their strikingly realistic effects.

Bibliography

See his autobiographies (1976, 1993), both ed. by N. Stangos; Hockney on Photography: Conversations with Paul Joyce (1988); G. Evans, ed, Hockney's Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective (2004); studies by M. Livingstone (1981, enl. ed. 1996), P. Webb (1988), K. E. Silver (1994), P. Clothier (1995), and P. Melia, ed. (1995).

Hockney, David

(born July 9, 1937, Bradford, Eng.) British painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. He studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In the mid 1960s he taught at the Universities of Iowa, Colorado, and California, and in 1978 he settled permanently in Los Angeles. His portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, and quiet scenes of friends are characterized by economy of technique, preoccupation with light, bright colours, and a frank, mundane realism derived from Pop art and photography. The California swimming pool became one of his favourite themes. A brilliant draftsman and printmaker, he published series of etchings, including illustrations for Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969). In the 1970s he achieved prominence as a set designer for the opera and ballet. He later experimented with photography and photocollage, and still later with computer technology and printers.