Hockney Art Quotes & Sayings

You should never wear anything you can't afford to lose. — Sloane Crosley

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. — Barbara Tuchman

...History is the key to the unity of a people. Its nostalgia pulls them together. Its gloom separates them further. Its successes make them stronger. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

A virtuous wife commands her husband by obeying him. — Publilius Syrus

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

If your religion hasn't made you a better person, then it has failed you as a religion. — Immortal Technique

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

Yeah, Pudge is adorable / but you want incorrigible / so Jake is more endurable / 'cause he's so - damn. Damn. I almost had four rhymes on adorable. But all I could think of was unfloorable, which isn't even a word. - Takumi — John Green

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there? — David Hockney

Only after seeing the winter, do you comprehend the richness of summer. This was a big theme, and one I could confidently do: the infinite variety of nature. — Martin Gayford

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art. — David Hockney

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with a pencil and paper in your hand, you are going to see far more. — David Hockney

I tried to put myself up for adoption several times. — Chelsea Handler

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair. — David Hockney

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture. — David Hockney

Would Turner have slept through such terrific drama? Absolutely not! Anyone in my business who slept through that would be a fool. I don't keep office hours. — Martin Gayford

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought. — David Hockney

I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old. — David Hockney

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art. — David Hockney

What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they paint shadows in European art? Shadows are because of optics. Optics need shadows and strong light. Strong light makes the deepest shadows. It took me a few years to realize fully that the art historians didn't grasp that. There are a lot of interesting new things, ideas, pictures. — David Hockney

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

Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same. — David Hockney

All along I've had an ambivalent relationship to photography - but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a craft, or a technique, well, I've always been taken with Henry Geldzahler's answer to that question when he said, I thought it was a hobby. — David Hockney

No theoretician, no writer on art, however interesting he or she might be, could be as interesting as Picasso. A good writer on art may give you an insight to Picasso, but, after all, Picasso was there first. — David Hockney

The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when people 'come out' it's quite an exciting moment. It means they become aware of their desires, and can deal with them in a remarkably honest way. — David Hockney

One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions. — Robert Menzies

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist. — David Hockney

At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. — Ayn Rand

Starting with the hypothesis that all the characters in Women in Love suffer from acute dissociation of sensibility, it becomes clear that psychological reintegration is no longer possible for them, and complete divorce between reason and emotion, mind and body, is imminent. As a result, the characters become mental or physical in basic nature and are symbolically presented accordingly. — John E. Stoll

I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries. — David Hockney

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny. — David Hockney

The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. — Edward Gibbon

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space. — David Hockney

You're my closest friend and you're thousands of miles away. — Anthony Horowitz

If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe. — Scott Walker

Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't have been seen by peasants and its importance would have been diminished. — 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

Dreams have their place in managerial activity, but they need to be kept severely under control. — Arnold Weinstock

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art. — David Hockney

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time. — David Hockney

Your total intelligence knows exactly what to do, because you were made to weather the storms of life. — Bryant McGill