David Hockney
It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Art
You would think death was an optional extra nowadays. Nobody wants to tick that box.Collection: Thinking
It's all one to me: opera, painting, drawing, faxes.Collection: Drawing
With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!Collection: Photography
I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world.Collection: Views
I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.Collection: Ipads
Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution.Collection: Meaningful
The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.Collection: Photography
You always need a bit of low-tech.You always need a pair of scissors, it seems to me. You can do better things.... The high-tech, somehow, you do have to combine it with low-tech things.Collection: Needs
Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.Collection: Photography
I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries.Collection: Art
Dawn is about luminosity and so is the iPhone... The little drawings of the dawn are done while I'm still in bed... If you're in my kind of business you'd be a fool to sleep through that... Artists can't work office hours, can they?Collection: Sleep
Perspective is a law of optics... The Chinese did not have a system like it. Indeed, it is said they rejected the idea of the vanishing point in the eleventh century, because it meant the viewer was not there, indeed, had no movement, therefore was not alive.Collection: Law
I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?Collection: Photography
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.Collection: Art
All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?Collection: Art
It's all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops—for a split second.Collection: Views
I have never really done any teaching and maybe I should have done. I am not power-mad enough.Collection: Teaching
There's no need to believe what an artist says. Believe what he does; that's what counts.Collection: Believe
With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well.Collection: Cover Ups
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.Collection: People
You can't believe any picture nowadays, if it's digital. You can't really believe. If you see me shaking hands with Mr. [Barack] Obama, it doesn't mean I ever met him, does it?Collection: Believe
When you're very young, you suddenly find this marvellous freedom. It's quite exciting, and you're prepared to do anything.Collection: Freedom
I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money – I think that can be a burden – I’m greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. On the other hand, I can find excitement, I admit, in raindrops falling on a puddle and a lot of people wouldn’t. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over.Collection: Fall
The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.Collection: Cameras
Painting and drawing has been here for 35,000 years.Collection: Years
Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.Collection: Hard Work
I'm really only interested in technology that is about pictures. I'm interested in anything that makes a picture.Collection: Technology
An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.Collection: Artist
I think probably something big can be done with cameras, I'm not saying, er, I'm saying chemical photography's finished, that means you can't have a Cartier Bresson again, you need never believe pictures.Collection: Photography
I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.Collection: Photography
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.Collection: Drawing
I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.Collection: People
I was never that interested in movies. I was interested in them as a thing, but I didn't want to make movies. I always wanted to draw and paint.Collection: Want
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.Collection: Tree
Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.Collection: Years
All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look... and paint what you see until the canvas ends.Collection: Nature
Technology brought in the mass media and technology is now taking it away.Collection: Technology
Once my hand has drawn something my eye has observed, I know it by heart, and I can draw it again without a model.Collection: Heart
The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine.Collection: Mistake
In fact, I'm a bit of a slob, but I've always said my excuse, I have a higher sense of order, I can see it where others can't. That's my excuse for slobbery, I must admit, but I think it's a good one.Collection: Thinking
Because I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it.Collection: Photography
I'm rather shocked by what I thought was simple mindedness actually. I thought they're not looking, they're not actually looking.Collection: Simple
I thought using three cameras was a lot better than one, because you could see where you were going, where you'd been, and all kinds of things - more like life. I think photography has colored our vision. We're now in an area where it might break something. I think this is a time. I feel it. I don't know whether I'll be here long enough to experience it. I've no plans to leave yet.Collection: Photography
The problem is, photographic dyes and printing inks aren't as good as paint, actually.Collection: Ink