David Hockney
The Biography, 1975-2012
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In this fascinating and entertaining second volume, Christopher Simon Sykes explores the life and work of Britain's most popular living artist.
David Hockney is one of the most influential and best-loved artists of the twentieth century. His career has spanned and epitomized the art movements of the past five decades. Picking up Hockney's story in 1975, this book finds him flitting between Notting Hill and California, where he took inspiration for the swimming pool series of paintings; creating acclaimed set designs for operas around the world; and embracing emerging technologies—the Polaroid camera and fax machine in the seventies and eighties and, most recently, the iPad. Hockney's boundless energy extends to his personal life too, and this volume illuminates the glamorous circles he moves in, as well as his sometimes turbulent relationships.
Christopher Simon Sykes has been granted exclusive and unprecedented access to Hockney's paintings, notebooks, and diaries, and a great number of them are reproduced here. Featuring interviews with family, friends, and Hockney himself, this is a lively and revelatory account of an acclaimed artist and an extraordinary man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this exhaustive biography, Sykes continues the second part of his chronicle of the life and work of Hockney, the British painter, photographer, printmaker, and stage designer. The detailed story resumes with the artist accepting an invitation to spend a heady social season on Fire Island, which was all "sex drugs and rock 'n' roll," and continues through his trips between homes in London and Los Angeles. Sykes vividly conveys the passion behind Hockney's engagement with new technologies and art practices including his panoramic photo collages with Polaroids, and his pioneering use of photocopying, Paintbox technology, iPhones, and iPads and examines the artist's major inspirations, including life in Hollywood, which resulted in some of his best known works, and his road trips across the United States. Meticulously woven together from correspondences, interviews, and diaries of family and friends, Sykes's revealing narrative offers intimate reflections and anecdotes. The many individual perspectives make for a candid portrait that explores everything from Hockney's dinners and parties with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and David Bowie, to his devotion to his mother, his relentless work ethic, his occasionally difficult personality, and his anxieties about the spread of AIDS and his own advancing age. This even-handed and diligent account is a worthwhile examination of the artist some have called "Britain's greatest living painter."
