Pop Art
www.davidhockney.co

Hockney, David. British painter, etcher and draughtsman, b. 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire. After studying at the Bradford School of Art (1953-7), and at the Royal College of Art (1959-62), Hockney won a Gold Medal and the Guinness Award for Etching in 1961; he was awarded a prize in the junior Section of the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1961, and in the Graphics Section of the Paris Biennale in 1963. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Kasmin Gallery in 1963. A retrospective exhibition of Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-1970 was mounted at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1970.

David Hockney's striking designs for Die Zauberflöte, created for the 1978 Glyndebourne Festival, were seen on an American stage for the first time at San Francisco Opera in 1987 and again in 1991. Local audiences were introduced to his stage work with his designs for The Rake's Progress, first seen here in 1982, with reprises of the work in 1988 and during our 1999-2000 Season. Additionally, the British-born artist's creations for Turandot were first presented here in 1993 and reprised in 1998. Hockney's career began in 1963 with his first solo exhibition in London. In 1966 he began designing for the stage when he created sets and costumes for London's Royal Court Theatre. Most recently, the internationally celebrated artist has designed sets and costumes for productions of operas and ballets such as Parade, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, Le Sacre du Printemps, Le Rossignol, Oedipus Rex, Tristan und Isolde and Die Frau ohne Schatten for companies including the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Los Angeles Opera. The vast body of his work also includes print designs for magazines and books, films, videos, and several celebrated series of etchings. Equally praised are works resulting from his fascination with photocopy and fax machines, still video cameras, and computer-generated images.One of the most critically acclaimed contemporary artists, Hockney's innovative work influences nearly every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and print making. In "Secret Knowledge" he rewrites the story of how Western artists made the great drawings and paintings of the last six centuries.

From his artist's perspective, Hockney asks how painters rendered their work rather than why. What he has discovered is that artists six-hundred years ago used lenses and mirrors to project color images of their subjects (people, fruit, vegetables, flowers, household objects) onto flat surfaces, and then traced those projected scenes with lifelike precision onto canvas or paper.

A chance observation in London's National Gallery led Hockney to develop his provocative insights and theories. Fueled by the passion of his pursuit, Hockney set aside his brushes, stopped painting, and over the course of two years he obsessively tracked down the hidden secrets Van Eyck, Holbein, da Vinci and other others among history's greatest painters. Backing up his theories with extensive scientific and visual evidence Hockney effectively argues that the widespread use of lenses and mirrors throughout the Renaissance produced a certain "look" that became the dominant way of representing and seeing the external world. Yet despite his discovery of artists' use of technical aids, Hockney leaves their personal mystique and talent intact, reminding readers throughout that the masters, not lenses, made their marks in paint with their own individual style and flair.

Given an extraordinary fresh look through the eyes of a contemporary master, hundreds of paintings of the great artists of the Renaissance are reproduced in "Secret Knowledge" in lavish color. To clarify his notions, Hockney uses his own drawings and photographs to clearly and simply illustrate how artists would have used the various optical devices available to them. Extracts from historical and modern documents provide further evidence and correspondence between Hockney and international experts details both the evolution of his theory and the furor that has erupted over it.

Achieving international success by his mid-20s, first as a leading Pop artist, Hockney's phenomenal success has been based not only on the flair, wit and versatility of his work, but also on his colorful personality. Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, will interview him at the evening forum. A finalist in criticism for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, Kimmelman has written on various cultural subjects for many publications. His book "Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and Elsewhere" was selected as a notable book of the year by The Washington Post and The Times and a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly. ...

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