Best 183 quotes of David Hockney on MyQuotes

About shadows: do we see shadows? Loads of people don't. A camera will notice a shadow, but how many people have got a shadow in front of them when they take a picture and don't notice it, and then they see it in the photograph because the photograph will catch the shadow.

...all along I've had an ambivalent relationship to photography - but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a craft, or a technique, well, I've always been taken with Henry Geldzahler's answer to that question when he said, I thought it was a hobby.

All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

A lot of people, given the chance, would blow up everything, and you and me.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

Anything simple always interests me.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.

Because I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it.

Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution.

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.

Britain is a very small country with a very large press.

But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it for constructing, makes you think about it, the place did as well.

But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't.

Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.

Enjoyment of the landscape is a thrill.

Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.

Everything does come from nature. That's where you get new ideas. Just draw the landscape. I felt doing it with a bit of burnt wood was also good because I was drawing burnt wood with a piece of wood. I wanted to do black and white. After using color, I thought black and white would be good. You can have color in black and white. There is color in them, actually.

Faces are the most interesting things we see

Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.

Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.

Great claims are being made for the photograph as truth. We are showing you things, we show you the war. I say you can't actually. The camera can't.

How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.

How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't.

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.

I am constantly preoccupied with how to remove distance so that we can all come closer together, so that we can all begin to sense we are the same, we are one.

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.

I believe that the problem of how you depict something is a formal problem. It's an interesting one and it's a permanent one; there's no solution to it. There are a thousand and one ways you can go about it. There's no set rule.

I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.

I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume - there's a flatness to them.

I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I'm assuming eventually you won't need a screen at all - these iPhones will just project.

I do believe that painting can change the world.

I do do a lot of talking, because it saves me listening.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change.

If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look... and paint what you see until the canvas ends.

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive.

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair.

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair...New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling... I do believe that painting can change the world.

I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.