video topic: art
entry type: documentary
video title: David Hockney: Pleasures of the Eye
artist featured: David Hockney
director: Gero von Boehm
producer: Sky Arts
run time: 60 min
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release date:
official website: http://www.skyarts.co.uk/art-design/article/david-hockney-pleasures-of-the-eye/
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David Hockney is one of the most critically acclaimed and universally popular artists of our time. He has devoted himself to forging a new way of seeing through an intense and impassioned exploration of a variety of forms, producing work in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking - and stretching the boundaries of all of them. He has undertaken a singular and ambitious experiment with ways of seeing and of representing sight: ranging from his paintings, with their challenges to perspective and brilliant colours, to his vivid, multi-dimensional photo-collages and his fax art, computer printings and coloured laser prints.
Hockney feels that his duty as an artist is to give pleasure. This philosophy began when he first saw a still-life by Matisse of a small vase of flowers, drawn during the bleak days of World War II. He has come to the conclusion that his life is a wonderful gift and that he must try everyday to enjoy what is the essence of life for him: 'pleasures of the eye'.
Since 1978, home for Bradford-born Hockney has been California. He only leaves his refuge in the Hollywood Hills when totally necessary. His home is also his play-house, a laboratory where he experiments with space and perspective. He finds inspiration for his work in his beautiful surroundings - most famously, perhaps, his series of swimming pool paintings and the surrounding hills. Much of this colourful profile was filmed in Hockney's stunning Californian home.
Hockney talks about his philosophy, his life and his work. He explains the method and meaning behind many of his paintings, in particular the large narrative painting The Journey to Christopher and Don's House in Sanla Monica, influenced by Chinese scroll painting and Cubism; and the deceptively simple photo-montage Pearblossom Hwy (1986). A favourite motif at present is his two dachshunds, and he describes and demonstrates how he goes about painting the many small portraits of his beloved dogs.
Scientific tests undertaken some time ago revealed that Hockney is one of a small group of people who 'see' sound and 'hear' colour. This talent has served him well in his fabulous set designs for opera productions, including his recent Turandot for the San Francisco Opera, a short extract of which is seen in the film. He also shares the experience, of driving through the spectacular Hollywood Hills, a journey which he has carefully orchestrated so that the ravishing landscape matches perfectly his choice of Wagnerian music on his car stereo.
Hockney travels to Europe for important exhibitions of his works. The cameras capture him in his London home and studio, and at the opening of the 1995 major retrospective of his work at the Royal Academy. In the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam, his perfectionism and concern for the spectator is demonstrated as he instructs the staff in the re-hanging of his work, which they had worked through the night to complete, but not to Hockney's satisfaction. He is also seen enthusiastically participating as starter for a "Dachshund Derby".
In Munich, he acts as guide to an exhibition of his stage designs for Erik Satie's Parade which he has augmented with spontaneous and witty wall paintings of the Pulcinella motif, an example of his gentle and unpretentious humour.
Hockney's world is full of colour, but he has lost many friends and recently sketched his partner, the art critic Henry Geldzahler on his deathbed. Inevitably his thoughts turn to his own mortality, but his enormous pleasure in visual beauty, matched by his capacity to share this pleasure with a wide audience, sustain him.
Gero von Boehm's relaxed and visually delightful profile captures the immense creativity, warmth and humanity of this major 20th-century artist.
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ONline: total 6 parts:
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