David Hockney

---

For a contemporary artist of serious aesthetic purpose, David Hockney enjoys immense, perhaps unequaled public visibility: the shock of dyed blond hair, the owlish glasses, and the shy, schoolboy grin are known as much through the popular press as through the journals of the art world. His engaging personality, his quirky but always enlightening ideas about art, and his inexhaustible inventiveness both of imagery and of techniques ranging from oil painting to photography to faxes are captured by Peter Clothier with clear-eyed intelligence and grace in this concise but comprehensive overview.

From his theatrical early canvases to his more recent photographic collages and operatic set designs, Hockney has tackled the challenge of space on a grand scale. At the same time, much of his work has been devoted to the things most dear to him-friends, family, home, and studio. An intellectual of wide-ranging erudition and a world traveler who makes his home in Hollywood, he still cherishes his roots in Bradford, the northern British town where he was born in 1937.

Invention, the driving force behind Hockney's art, is in good part play: "If art isn't playful," he once commented, "it's nothing." This illuminating, color-rich volume conveys with vivid clarity Hockney's serious delight in making art that gives pleasure to both its creator and its audience.
menej