Customer Reviews

David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape

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An unusual formatted book similiar to an exhibit catalogue only more expensive. I was disappointed in the number of images and text especially for the expense of the book. The images are nicely presented with some attention to details of the work. Some readers may be surprised by the innovative method of outdoor painting where Hockney uses multiple canvases to produce a mammoth connective unified painting. His attention to one motif painted during different seasons reminds me of Monet's Haystack series. The paintings are very painterly which is refreshing after so many decades of photo-based paintings.

I would suggest that the reader would enjoy the video, A Bigger Picture, much more. As Hockney deals a lot with space and time concepts in painting the video confirms the limitations of painting but also shows the value of capturing a moment on canvas.

This is a well produced but repetitive documentation of Hockney's show of plein-aire Yorkshire landscape paintings at LA Louver. The book presents some of Hockney's strongest paintings ever, but the catalogue itself is inadequate-- minimal text, good reproductions of the same paintings on the page and in situ and too many filler details. There is a need for a good comprehensive book on this important body of work, but this is not it. The video about these paintings by Bruno Wohlheim, , A BIGGER PICTURE, is more informative and satisfying and actually conveys the work better.