Top 200 David Hockney Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I don’t value prizes of any sort.”

— David Hockney

152. “I have never really done any teaching and maybe I should have done. I am not power-mad enough.”

— David Hockney

153. “Any artist will tell you he’s really only interested in the stuff he’s doing now. He will, always. It’s true, and it should be like that.”

— David Hockney

154. “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.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

156. “We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn’t happen in music.”

— David Hockney

157. “It’s all one to me: opera, painting, drawing, faxes.”

— David Hockney

158. “People from the village come up and tease me: ‘We hear you’ve started drawing on your telephone.’ And I tell them, ‘Well, no, actually, it’s just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,’”

— David Hockney

159. “I’m rather shocked by what I thought was simple mindedness actually. I thought they’re not looking, they’re not actually looking.”

— David Hockney

160. “The cameras are getting smaller, they’re getting more versatile, and eventually, I’m sure you’ll have a camera with lots and lots of things on it so you can alter the picture. You could alter perspective.”

— David Hockney

161. “It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are.”

— David Hockney

162. “It’s time to debate images, especially when someone’s going to prison for downloading them.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

164. “I haven’t stopped painting or drawing – I’ve just added another medium.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

166. “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.”

— David Hockney

167. “Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

169. “I’ve always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.”

— David Hockney

170. “Because I’m interested in depiction, representation, therefore you’re interested in photography. You don’t ignore it.”

— David Hockney

171. “Britain is a very small country with a very large press.”

— David Hockney

172. “Faces are the most interesting things we see.”

— David Hockney

173. “I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I’m assuming eventually you won’t need a screen at all – these iPhones will just project.”

— David Hockney

174. “The lens is a tyranny.”

— David Hockney

175. “How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.”

— David Hockney

176. “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?”

— David Hockney

177. “Tragedy is a literary concept.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

180. “Photographs aren’t accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.”

— David Hockney

181. “I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.”

— David Hockney

182. “I think probably something big can be done with cameras, I’m not saying, er, I’m saying chemical photography’s finished, that means you can’t have a Cartier Bresson again, you need never believe pictures.”

— David Hockney

183. “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.”

— David Hockney

184. “I’m not going to stop painting just to take orders.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

186. “I’m sure that the camera is part of European art.”

— David Hockney

187. “The problem is, photographic dyes and printing inks aren’t as good as paint, actually.”

— David Hockney

188. “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.”

— David Hockney

189. “Future art that is based on appearances won’t look like the art that’s gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same.”

— David Hockney

190. “The editing of moving pictures is geared toward the single image. You’d have to edit things in new ways.”

— David Hockney

191. “The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We’re looking at a document. It gives you clues.”

— David Hockney

192. “I’ve realized that I can do performances.”

— David Hockney

193. “I’m a bit claustrophobic, I know that now.”

— David Hockney

194. “Movie actors disappear – any young person wouldn’t know Cary Grant. They’re going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually – except perhaps paintings and drawings.”

— David Hockney

195. “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.”

— David Hockney

196. “I was never that interested in movies. I was interested in them as a thing, but I didn’t want to make movies. I always wanted to draw and paint.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

199. “What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.”

— David Hockney

200. “Artists, real artists, have to work. They can’t be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous place. You have to look and to work. That’s exactly why Van Gogh was such a great artist: total commitment. That’s what you need.”

— David Hockney