David Hockney Quotes

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I paint what I like, when I like and where I like.

Anything simple always interests me.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

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

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.

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood.

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.

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.

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.

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.

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.

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.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.

There are enough no smoking places now.

Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it.

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature.

When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'

Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill.

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it.

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!'

I'm a natural sceptic.

Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they?

I was 18 when I first visited London, I'm very provincial like that, but I must confess the moment I got to America I thought: This is the place. It was more open, with 24-hour cities and pubs and restaurants that didn't close.

I've always felt very English.

I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever.

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.

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

Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.

I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old.

I think my father would have liked to have been an artist, actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or, I don't know, I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.

I mean if you draw you like drawing, it's er, an activity you do all the time actually.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

I value my friends.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.

I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders.

I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

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.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

Spring is very energising to me.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.

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

Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?

I've realized that I can do performances.

I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn.

West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things.

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.

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

California is always in my mind.

I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West.

My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.

I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light.

It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it.

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things.

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.

The photograph isn't good enough. It's not real enough.

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

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

I prefer living in color.

I'm not antisocial. I like people.

You can't name the inventor of the camera. The 19th-century invention was chemical: the fixative.

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

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

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.

I think the Enlightenment is leading us into a dark hole, really.

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

It's time to debate images, especially when someone's going to prison for downloading them.

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

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