David Hockney Quotes
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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!'
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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.
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I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see.
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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.
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My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else.
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As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.
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It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.
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I've realized that I can do performances.
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I'm a natural sceptic.
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I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light.
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I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond.
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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.
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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.
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In one gallery they actually had a notice which said 'No Sketching.' How obnoxious! I said, 'How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?'
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I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West.
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I've started painting much more freely, and faster. I think it's working in the theatre that did it. You know what the Glyndebourne scene-painters said about my The Magic Flute? They said they had to wear sunglasses to paint it.
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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.
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Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.
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I value my friends.
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Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?
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Interviewer: Love is certainly at the center of tolerance. They're intertwined, in a certain way. It helps you appreciate difference.Hockney: Yes. And that's probably why I do portraits. Everybody's different; they look different, and are different. Maybe deep, deep down we're all the same. But on the surface we seem to be different, don't we?
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I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.
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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.
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It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.