Top 200 David Hockney Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway – it is called medication.”

— David Hockney

152. “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.”

— David Hockney

153. “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.”

— David Hockney

154. “When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

156. “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

157. “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

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

— David Hockney

159. “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

160. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

164. “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

165. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

168. “The lens is a tyranny.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

170. “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

171. “Tragedy is a literary concept.”

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

174. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

179. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

184. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

187. “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

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

— David Hockney

189. “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

190. “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

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

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

— David Hockney

195. “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

196. “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

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

— David Hockney

198. “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

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

— David Hockney

200. “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