David Hockney Portraits

Description

David Hockney is one of the most significant artists exploring and pushing the boundaries of figurative art today. He has been engaged with portraiture since his teenage years, when he painted Portrait of My Father (1955), and his self-portraits and his portraits of family, lovers, friends and well-known subjects represent an intimate visual diary of the artist's life. This authoritative new study examines Hockney's portraits in all media - painting, drawing, photographs and prints - and is produced in close collaboration with the artist. Together the authors reveal how Hockney's creative development and concerns about representation can be traced through his portrait work: from his battle with naturalism, to his experimentation with and later rejection of photography, and from his recent camera lucida drawings to his return to painting from life. Featuring over 250 works from the past fifty years, 'David Hockney Portraits' illustrates not only the range of his creative practice but also the circular nature of his artistic pre-occupations.