Customer Reviews

Hockney's Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective

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"The Definitive Retrospective" sounds a bit unctuous and presumptuous for a book of selected paintings from an artist's enormous output, but when the artist himself makes the title, we pay attention. This is a splendid picture book with minimal writing and conversation put together by Hockney and Gregory Evans, a book that surveys almost every aspect of this prodigious artist's career. To a point. The book was published in 2004 and Hockney is still painting daily!

As those who are having the complete pleasure of attending the current touring exhibition 'DAVIS HOCKNEY PORTRAITS' currently in Los Angeles, the absence of his 2005 massive output of studio visitor portraits and some of his most current large portraits are missing from this 'definitive retrospective'. But more is the joy, knowing that Hockney continues to invent and pursue ideas and venues that challenge him and result in some of the most exciting work he has made.

But for the reader of this excellent volume there is indeed much to love. Hockney sprinkles the margins of the book with little bits of observation, philosophy and humor. The strong point of the book is the plethora of images very well reproduced on excellent paper. It would be testy to say this is the finest of the many Hockney books available, but at least this one is the painter's stance on the definitive aspect of his career in painting. Welcome to the joy of David Hockney (and buy the Portraits catalogue to embellish this volume!). Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 06

This book is a very complete compendium of David Hockney's output up to 2004. Its main asset is the quality of the illustrations, some of which are accompanied by a short commentary by the artist. Divided into four chapters ( chapter 1, entitled "problems of depiction", deals with the artist's various series on theater stages, water, movement, how to adapt to a moving viewpoint, the problem of styles, etc; chapter 2 entitled "life stilled", dwells on home, life, still life, love; chapter 3 tackles portraits; chapter 4 studies space and light) it has very little text and leaves it to the reader, or rather, to the spectator to interpret all the works (which, in my opinion, is not a bad idea for an art book).

Probably the best available on this major artist.

With minimum text, the introduction takes just one page, and the introduction to each of its four sections barley half a page each, `Hockney's Pictures' is aptly titled. The introduction explains the aim of each section: `Problems of Depiction', `Life Stilled', `Portraits' and `Space and Light', and then allows the pictures to provide the answers along with the occasional brief and down to earth comment from Hockney himself alongside the relevant picture.

This is a carefully designed volume; the almost square format comfortably accommodates both landscape and portrait proportions, the images are presented imaginatively on the page with a varied layout which manages to avoid being confusing. Many of the images are full page with some presented as full page bleed and some occasionally crossing the gutter. Each picture is given its title and date; the additional details of size and medium are to be found in a separate list at the back of the book. The book describes itself as having "325 illustrations, 277 in colour"; however this is slightly unfair for as far as I can tell the 48 black and white images comprise pencil or charcoal drawings, etchings and the like which in themselves are monochrome.

This is what an art book should be, full to the brim with images which, along with occasional comment from the artist, are allowed to speak for themselves.

I'm a bit of a newbie to Hockney and I prefer to get to know the artist via his work and not so much via the views of the author. I enjoyed this book immensely; it's packed with images of the artists work and with interesting comments done by Hockney himself. Each chapter (rather few) has a one page introduction to the time / period in question with just the right amount of text to keep your interest up.

It is a good mesured book(not too big not too small). Perfect quality paper and perfetly done pictures perfect everything but I didn't get so much inspirations as a painter. Perhaps it is my fault but there is so many childish pictures. Sorry