Top 246 Quotes & Sayings by David Hockney - Page 2

The moment I got a very big studio, everything took off.

There are enough no smoking places now.

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

I live wherever I happen to be.

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.

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.

I don't value prizes of any sort.

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.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

I've realized that I can do performances.

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.

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

California is always in my mind.

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

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

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

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

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

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

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

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

I generally only paint people I know, I'm not a flatterer really.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Tragedy is a literary concept.

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

I'm a natural sceptic.

Of course you can still paint landscape - it's not been worn out.

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

As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.

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.

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

I'm a bit of a propagandist.

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.

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

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

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

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

It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much.

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.

Easel painting means small painting.

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

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

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

I'm fed up with being bossed around.

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?

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 believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful.

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.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

It takes a long time to make it simple.

If you are not playful you are not alive.

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

We don't all see the same way at all. Even if I'm sitting looking at you, there is always the memory of you as well. And a memory is now. So someone who's never met you before is seeing a different person. That's bound to be the case. We all see something different. I assume most people don't look very hard at anything.

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