Hockney'S Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction

David Hockney has explored diverse ways of depicting the visible world, rejecting the photograph as the definitive image. He has identified a camera culture in European painting from 1400 and argues that painters like Jan van Eyck are the product of optical devices. His book, Secret Knowledge, claims that art historians have missed the central aspect of painters practice. His artistic practice has been in vigorous dialogue with his radical thesis, resulting in new and dynamic ways of characterizing the visual world.

Format: Hardback
Length: 184 pages
Publication date: 05 April 2022
Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd

Throughout his illustrious career, David Hockney has relentlessly pursued diverse avenues to depict the visible world. He has delved into the techniques of the old masters, and ventured into radical departures from their cherished assumptions. The exhibitions accompanying this volume mark the first to explicitly focus on this central theme in his art.

For centuries, Western art has been dominated by the representation of nature. Was this to be achieved through direct observation, known as "eyeballing," or with the aid of optical theory and devices, such as cameras? Hockney has experimented with the full spectrum of existing strategies, openly employing perspective in some of his iconic works and meticulously investigating optical aids for the imitation of nature, including the camera obscura and camera lucida.

Yet, he has come to reject the photograph as the definitive image of what we see. Along the way, he has identified a "camera culture" in European painting from 1400, arguing controversially that the supreme naturalism of painters like Jan van Eyck is the product of optical devices. His book, Secret Knowledge (2001), with its majestic panorama of paintings spanning five centuries, claims that art historians have overlooked the fundamental aspect of painters' practice. The Hockney thesis has received more favorable reception outside the professional realm of art history than within it.

His artistic practice has been in vibrant dialogue with his radical thesis, and he has progressively demonstrated new and dynamic ways of characterizing the visual world without perspective and other conventional techniques. This pursuit has led to a series of exhilarating challenges to our ways of seeing in the major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Weight: 1150g
Dimension: 246 x 286 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781913645120