Hockney Quotes

From 'Hockney on Art':

"I'm convinced now that there is no such thing as objective vision. We choose all the time to look at what we see. We realise that we are always attracted to certain things."

"Each person notices different things, but everybody sees people first. You look at people, or you deliberately don't look. If you don't look, it's a very conscious choice. If you are a painter you look at paint, and if you are a book dealer you look at the books, and so on and so on."

"The moment that you leave Cubism, everything becomes based on a fixed point. My joke is that al ordinary photographs are taken by a one-eyed frozen man! But the joiners are to do with movement. I'm moving around when I'm taking them. It's not possible to use a tripod, not the way I'm working."

"The experience of art is more real than in photography. The moment is longer, and we can feel that moment. In a photograph we can't. Perhaps that is why there are so few good photographs. The good ones that do exist are almost accidental, one fraction of a second that looks as though it's longer than it is. We don't know what an isolated fraction of a second is. We can't isolate a second in our lives, can we? The photograph must be a much more primitive picture than a painting is. But, if you asked the average person which looks more real, they would say the photograph. I'm convinced it can't be true."

David Hockney. Place Furstenburg, Paris, August 7,8,9th, 1985. Photographic collage.