David Hockney Short Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

View all David Hockney Quotes
Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look.

David Hockney
The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors.

David Hockney
Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

David Hockney
I kept thinking, if his face was that wrinkled, what did his balls look like?
After drawing W. H. Auden

David Hockney
All art is contemporary, if it's alive. And if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

David Hockney
All painting, no matter what you're painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

David Hockney
We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

David Hockney
How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.

David Hockney
It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

David Hockney
I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.

David Hockney
The reason you start painting yourself…is that you are a model; a cheap model. I mean you've always got yourself!

David Hockney
Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

David Hockney
I never talk when I'm drawing a person, especially if I'm making line drawings. I prefer there to be no noise at all so I can concentrate more.

David Hockney
What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.

David Hockney
Tobacco may kill you but it's slow and it's rather a pleasure. People smoke for their mental health don't they? It's part of their total health, I'd say.

David Hockney
It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

David Hockney
In one gallery they actually had a notice which said "No Sketching." How obnoxious! I said, "How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching?"

David Hockney
Television is becoming a collage — there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

David Hockney
Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.

David Hockney
In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

David Hockney
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

David Hockney
Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

David Hockney
The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway — it is called medication.

David Hockney