Awareness Post: David Hockney

The artists I chose to do my awareness post on is David Hockney. David Hockney was born in England in June of 1937. He paints, prints, photographs, designs stages, and more. His work centers around light, mundane realism, and surrealism. His work has been exhibited all over the globe and he is fairly well known, featured in over 75 articles written in 2021 alone, including by large publishers such as BBC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His website is attached below with all of his exhibitions, but a few galleries where he has been exhibited are the Bayeux Museum, Teylers Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and The Holburne Museum.

https://www.hockney.com/exhibitions/past

Education:

Bradford College of Art (1953-57)

Royal College of Art (1959-62)

Taught at the universities of Iowa, Colorado, and California

Books:

Hockney by Hockney

Travels with Pen, Pencil, and Ink

Paper Pools

David Hockney Photographs

China Diary

Hockney Paints the State

Some of his awards:

Received a gold medal in the graduate competition at the Royal College of Art

The Praemium Imperiale prize for painting from the Japan Art Association

Appointed to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II

This slider features some of my favorite work that I've seen of Hockney. I absolutely love his series of the red dogs. They are titled, "Dog 1","Dog 2" and so on. Most of his paintings are done with acrylic, which is cool because that is the paint type that I have the most experience with. I feel that his red dog series is not what he is best known for, but it is my favorite body of his. I love the choice to make the dogs a vivid red and pair them with other primary colors. I also think that it's fun that he varies his art style with them, from very flat to pretty realistic.

His other body of work that I really like is his pool pieces. I like how some of the red dog paintings actually feature pool water or floats and connects to this large body of work that he has. I picked two of my favorite pool paintings of his. In both, I think the variance in texture makes the piece more interesting. The flat water lines paired with the really realistic clothing and gritty landscape textures provides nice contrast. Similarly, in the next piece, the doodly flat water paired with the textured men is nice. I also like the choice to have their butts very pale, as I feel like that isn't an image frequently shown in media. The title of the first piece is “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" and the title of the second piece is "Splash!" I think that the variation in titling is also interesting.