David Hockney: portraits and conversations

Robert Tanitch reviews two books on David Hockney

HOCKNEY’S PORTRAITS AND PEOPLE by by Marco Livingstone and Kay Heymer (Thames & Hudson £19.95). The book gives great pleasure. Here are 246 illustrations and commentary at a bargain price.  If you are already an aficionado you will want this book and if you are not an aficionado you could well become one with this collection which is both iconic and unfamiliar.

The portraits show him experimenting in different mediums. Hockney is an acute eye-witness and most adept at translating his observations into paint.  The over-lapping and cropping allow him a variety of expressions in just one living portrait.

Hockney records the changing relationships between him and his model – and especially so when he is painting his lover. The final double portraits are masterly. The portraits of his mother are particularly moving. “Faces,” says Hockney, “are the most interesting things we see. The face tells all.”

A BIGGER MESSAGE Conversations with David Hockney by Martin Gayford (Thames & Hudson £16.95) is a record of a decade and a half of conversations.  “Pictures influence pictures but pictures also make us see things we might not otherwise see.” So says Hockney, greedy for an exciting life.

His abiding preoccupation is what the world looks like and how human beings represent it. “Landscape and portraiture are infinite.” Gregarious and solitary, his intellectual curiosity is voracious. New technology acts on him as a stimulant.

He made his name with the double portraits but since then he has been concerned with finding ways of depicting the world that escapes the trap of naturalism.  He has taken a long and hard look at the Bridlington landscape all the year around.

The conversations provide an invaluable and vivid portrait of the artist’s work and mind. There are over 180 illustrations.

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