11 Things You Didn’t Know About David Hockney

Knowledge can be gained at any age. After having a detailed study on topics there are things unknown to us. So, we at Abirpothi present before you the lesser-known facts about artists around the world.

David Hockney

Artists, real artists, have to work. They can’t be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous place. You have to look and to work. That’s exactly why Van Gogh was such a great artist: total commitment. That’s what you need.

David Hockney

David Hockney is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He is known for his iconic Californian swimming pools, vivid Yorkshire landscapes and portraits of his dearest friends and family. Hockney is often referred to British Pop Art, but clearly is not a Pop Artist. He has been associated with Cubism, but this only refers to his work during the 1990s. In short, David Hockney simply is a contemporary painter, an artist, in the purest and most complete form of its definition.

David Hockney was born to Laura and Kenneth Hockney on July 9, 1937. He had an early inclination for the arts and was a fan of Picasso, Matisse, and Fragonard. Hockney attended Wellington Primary School for his early education before receiving a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School in 1948. He studied at the Bradford College of Art from 1953 to 1957. Hockney produced his characteristic L.A. paintings, including some of his most iconic works such as a Beverly Hills Housewife (1966), Portrait of Nick Wilder (1966), Bigger Splash (1967), Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachary (1968), Mister and misses Clark and Percy (1971) and arguably his most famous artwork Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972).

David Hockney is noted for his paintings that are known for exploring difficult topics like sexuality and postmodernism through a lens of vivid colour and escapist imagery. His paintings are always rooted in his skill as a draughtsman and impeccable graphic sensibility. Hockney, a well-known figure in British Pop and a multidisciplinary artist, uses each medium to facilitate his artistic investigations. His photography work explored perspective, while his acclaimed prints navigate visual narrative with stylistic delicacy.

11 lesser-known facts about David Hockney

1. In 1990, he turned down a knighthood, on grounds that he didn’t ‘care for a fuss\’ and that prizes ‘of any sort are a bit suspect’.
2. Hockney’s autobiography, A Bigger Book, weighs 35kg. It measures 200cm in width at the full spread and is 500 pages long.

   

3. He believes smoking is good for his mental health and was vehemently opposed to the legislation to ban smoking in England.
4. Hockney has been partially deaf for over 40 years and can only hear with the help of powerful hearing aids, which he has in several different colours.

   

5. The first painting he ever sold was a portrait of his father which fetched £10 at the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition in 1957.
6. As a conscientious objector Hockney refused compulsory National Service in the 1950s but instead spent two years as a hospital orderly.

   

7. Hockney designed the cover of the 1989 British Telecom telephone directory for Bradford.
8. In collaboration with physicist Charles M. Falco, Hockney defined the Hockney-Falco thesis, which affirms that advances in realism and accuracy in Western art since the Renaissance were the result of camera obscuras, camera lucidas and curved mirrors, rather than developments in technique or individual genius.

   

9. He drew a now famous satirical sketch when the RCA refused to award him his diploma.

   

10. In the 1980s, Hockney experimented with photocollage – joining and combining photos (often taken with a Polaroid camera) to form a patchwork image.
11. Hockney has synesthesia, which means he sees synesthetic colours through music. While this isn’t necessarily shown through his artwork, he creates stage designs for theatre that reflect this particular gift.