All language subtitles for Randall Wright - (2014) Hockney

Get it around there. Just turn it around.

That's it. Bring that
around. There. That's nice.

Wait. Let me check this.
Let me turn the brush.

There. Good.

David came to the college with
this pinstriped suit and a high starch

collar and a very thin little tie
and this pudding bowl haircut.

And I said to myself, "My God,
look at the state of this fella."

I said, "He's like a Russian
peasant. A right Boris."

You know those crinkly chippers?

You see, he had a crinkly chipper,
when chips used to be straight.

He always had bloody theories
about everything, you know.

"Here, well, there's more surface
area. It makes a better chip."

He had a need to have a guiding theory.

When he decided he'd hit
on the right one, it was like

someone who'd suddenly
seen the light in a new religion.

And you'd tend to dread meeting
him and be subjected to it again.

It was always easy to get
him on the subject of cigarettes.

I asked him what he thought about this
billboard over on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Right away, he says, uh,

"Well, I should rent the
billboard across the street that

would tell the number of
people who died of other causes."

I think he was a bit in
love with me for a while.

I do think that's true. And I
remember wearing this suit in San Francisco

and going up to Nob
Hill, which is a very steep slope.

And he said, "Celia,

those trousers from the back.

I don't think you look your best in those."

And I never wore them again.

We had this polar bear white
carpet, and he was doing some ink

drawings on the floor, and he
got a spot of ink on the carpet.

And my father got hysterical.

I said, "Dad, we should have him sign it.
It'll be worth millions in a couple of years."

We go under the stairs, a little
cupboard to hide under the stairs.

When the bomb drops on
the street, my mother screams.

If she screams, you scream.

I mean, you're very frightened
if your mother's frightened.

So it's something I've always remembered.

And actually, so had all
my brothers and sister.

It's the first... First
memory I have. Yeah.

I was born in 1937, and I do remember
the end of the Second World War.

I was brought up with rationing.

They didn't end rationing
till I was 16 years old.

So, you couldn't just go
buy a bar of chocolate.

You could only buy sweets Saturday
morning when you got your pocket money.

You'd be given it at 9:00, and
the sweets had gone by 9:15.

You'd have bought them and
eaten them, and that was it.

And you'd have to wait
till another Saturday.

I mean, I was brought up
in austerity, like, and that.

On the other hand, we didn't
feel poor. Life was interesting.

You know, I mean, you're
a kid, so life is interesting.

Uh, whether you'd much money or not.

It's always interesting to children
in that way. It should be anyway.

Um, and it was to my father.

I mean, he... he wasn't a very
sophisticated man in many ways.

I mean, he was a bit puritanical for me.

But he had a heart. I mean, he cared about people
and felt there should be justice in the world.

I mean, he was
political that way.

The one thing I loved...

My father could paint the line on a crossbar
of a bicycle using a special long brush.

He'd rest your finger on the top, and then you do it
without a ruler, you see, like a sign writer would.

But to watch it done without a
ruler was very thrilling, I thought.

Incredible that you can make a straight
line like that, just with your eye.

I mean, it's like watching
Michelangelo draw a circle.

Why are you popular?

What is it, do you think, in your
work that goes straight through

to the understanding and feelings
of a large number of people?

Well, I'm not that
sure, really. Go on. Try.

Of course, I'm interested in ways of looking
and trying to think of it in simple ways.

If you can communicate that,
of course, people will respond.

Everybody does look.

Um, it's just a question of how
hard they're willing to look, isn't it?

We were at a restaurant and somehow the
subject came up of David's failings and faults.

Henry took the napkin and wrote just like that, as fast as you please.

It was so funny. I picked it
up, and I've saved it ever since.

It started out "stubborn." Then
"hard of hearing" was the next one.

"Generous to a fault."

Uh, "Emotional in the guise of reason."

And "often overhardy."

And he's written in parentheses,
"walking and bathing."

And, uh, oh, the other one is, which
he's written is "unintentionally rude."

And he's underlined
"unintentionally" twice.

I think it's a really good
description of David.

I've saved it forever.

One of the things that my father taught me was
not to worry too much what the neighbors think.

Well, that's aristocratic,
actually, not working class.

That's aristocratic. I mean,

"Fuck you. I don't care
what the neighbors think."

And my mother would have cared.

But Kenneth told me that.

"Don't you worry too much
what the neighbors think."

And I always thought... I took that
lesson, actually. Yeah, I noticed it.

When he was at Bradford Art School,
he was in an evening class, life drawing,

and there was a guy, a bit of a sort of
rocker or something, and he had an art

student girlfriend, probably with that sort
of witch-type mascara that was about then.

They were real art students and there was
the schoolboy, you see, intensely drawing.

And he said this guy was
just like this on his thing

and sort of putting his feet
up on the donkey, you know,

and all this, and just spent
two hours taking the piss

out of Hockney for being
so earnest and just drawing.

And the girlfriend was laughing,
and the model was laughing.

And I said, "What did you
do?" He just said, "Well..."

He said, "Well, I just thought,
"Well, I'll fucking show them.'"

And he had revealed
the inner David, you know.

Willpower.

Nobody was there when I
arrived at the Royal College.

And I just sort of got a cubicle
they appointed me and I laid out

my stuff and then suddenly this
very strange-looking guy walks in.

And doesn't say a word, just starts
setting up in the cubicle next to me.

Then Derek Boshier came in and
took up the cubicle on the other side.

So there was Derek on my left,
and David on my right and me

in the middle, and we became
quite friendly after a few weeks.

He was living in a little
hut in Earl's Court, and I

went there once or twice,
but it was not very large.

It barely fit the two of us in there.

London in the '60s was becoming very hip,
very different, also very antiestablishment.

The atmosphere that I sensed in the cubicles
that were surrounding me was of experimentation.

They wanted to experiment, to
find something different than what

they knew, and they weren't even
sure what that was going to be.

I think they were interested
in America, definitely.

But, strangely enough, I think it was
the abstract expressionist painters and the

anti-traditionalism of those artists
that really intrigued the British painters.

The main thing then was abstraction.

The abstract expressionists
were very big, and so

by the end of my second
year, I went to New York.

Somebody stopped me in the street
and said they had this ticket for New York.

And it cost £40.

And all I had to give them was £10 now and I could have it if I gave the £30 later.

I thought it cost £1,000 to go to America.

I mean, I'd never thought
of going to America.

So, um, I said okay.

I only had about £12, but I thought, "Well, I'll get the money somehow."

I think almost the next day this
letter came with a check for £100.

I'd won a prize.

And then I started selling
pictures for £10, £12, £15.

In the end, I went to America with...

about $350.

And that was to last me for two months.

I had a great time in New York then.

I thought New York was the place to be.

That was it, I thought.

I mean, it ran 24 hours a
day then. Absolutely did.

...putting whipped
cream on your head.

But this is Lady Clairol Whipped Creme.

It makes every bleach l've
ever used old-fashioned.

It's the fabulous new
way to be blonde, beautifully.

Lady Clairol hair lightener whips
instantly, never runs or drips.

I was living in my parents' home
in Long Island in Long Beach.

Friends of mine and David were all in
my house one evening watching television.

And this ad came on.

I don't even remember
what we were watching.

But this ad came on for
Clairol and saying, you know,

everybody should go blonde
because blondes have more fun.

And they all looked at it and they
said, "Wow. That sounds good."

And they rushed out and
bought Clairol hair dye, and they

were all sitting in my parents'
living room dying their hair.

My father walked in and
almost had a heart attack.

You know, "What the hell is going on here?"

But that's where David decided he was
gonna be blonde for the rest of his life.

Is he still blonde?

Lovely, aren't they?

You can drop 'em on a stone
floor and pick 'em up again.

Eight pieces.

Give me eight and six for the half a dozen.

Eight shillings, half a dozen!

Right.

He was always drawing, always,
as long as I can ever remember.

When he had little stubby
fingers, he'd be drawing something.

And he never stopped. And we
didn't have paper like you have today,

but you've got the edge
of notebooks and things or...

anything where there was
a space... a bus ticket, even.

So if you were on a bus,
he'd have a pencil in his hand

probably drawing other
passengers, things like that.

The weight. Oh, yeah. Wow, the weight.

When you think now, you
can get it on Kindle, can't you?

Yeah. Ah, yes, this is the sort of thing.

He would have been all excited about "who's
done these?" and "why have they done them?"

And, I mean, brilliant, especially when
you go back with the history as well.

So, yes, this would have influenced him.

You see, this was the only way
you could see the world, wasn't it?

I mean, there was Cartwright
Hall in Bradford with some pictures.

By looking at pictures, he would
realize, "I can do what I like."

Once you've seen these, can't you?

And it would give him the freedom
to be an artist and be an artist

who painted exactly what he wanted
to paint, what he needed to paint.

He'd be looking at these and looking
at the techniques and why they did...

He'd see it totally with
his eye, which would be

quite different to what
the rest of us would see.

"Badges."

"Good health is worth more than a fortune."

Put those in the car.

You're gonna take them? Yep.

Do you remember the hens on the
field up here before they built the houses?

- Oh, you'd only be ever so young.
- Oh, yes. On...

Well, I have that somewhere. It's framed.

Did you see anything, Margaret?

No, I can't find those cuff links.

We used to live in Steadman
Terrace during the war.

It was a small house and closed in.

It was claustrophobic, actually, yes.

And there were five
of us. All right, we were

only small, so that
didn't matter too much.

And it was at the top of a hill and if it
was dark, you couldn't see a thing anywhere.

There was a lot of darkness from that house
in my memory, so probably the same with David.

But I think the claustrophobia could have
been a bit of emotional as well as space wise.

I know he always says he likes space.

But you do need space from
people as well, don't you?

In fact, that is what
space is, isn't it, actually?

What else is space? Being alone.

♪ "L" is for the way
you look at me ♪

♪ "O" is for the only one I see ♪

Within one week of coming here, I'd never driven before.

I'd got a driving license, bought
a car, got a studio and got a living.

I thought, "This is the place."

It's got all the energy of
the United States with the

Mediterranean thrown in, which I
think is a wonderful combination.

David took some snapshots.

He took Polaroids of me
standing in front of the barroom.

And I was dusting some of the heads,
'cause I had a lot of animal heads.

My first husband was a great white hunter.

And David only took about
three black and white Polaroids.

I said, "David, how can you
work from black and white?"

"Oh," he said, "I can only work
from black and white photographs

because the color of photography
is never the same as real life."

Anyway, so he took the
pictures and I said, "There's only

one thing you could call this
painting, since I'm dusting."

It's called "Beverly Hills Housewife".

Some people will say, well,
LA is a good place to hide.

You can cull out a private life here for yourself if you wish, and a lot of people do that.

Because of the kind of setup
of the city and everything.

People don't walk here. They take cars.

And David's had this
place here for many years.

But he wasn't part of a community
like Venice or downtown LA.

But he just managed to get
around, uh, all over the city.

And, uh, I know that he would like
to go out on rides, you know, driving

way out in the country, and I think
he's done that several times too.

- I'll be there.
- Okay.

A guy came. He was asking about
you earlier. He may try to reach you.

All right, love. Bye. See you later.

My daddy promised me a horse all for
myself when I got here from back east.

He said a boy needs a horse to love, and if it's
the right boy, the horse will learn to love him too.

There he is. Boy, he's a beauty.

No wonder he's the king of the wild herd.

I've just gotta get him today.

That's for sure, Bob. We can't
disappoint that kid of yours.

He's coming in on the 459.

When I arrived here, somebody said, "Well,
why have you come to this cultural desert?"

Well, I didn't think it was a cultural
desert because I knew Hollywood was here.

Come on, boys. Come on.

My father loved the
cinema. So did we as kids.

And, remember, I'm about the last
generation brought up without television.

I was 18 years old when
we first got television.

So my childhood was radio and things.

But we loved the pictures. They
were always called "the pictures."

Not the movies, not
the cinema. The pictures.

"Can we go to the pictures?"

They had a powerful effect on me, you know.

We used to go in the side entrance.

And, of course, there was a lavatory down there
with an exit, and kids used to go and open it.

Little kids would run in
free, you know, doing that.

I used to tell them, "If you walk in
backwards, they'll think you're coming out."

And I would point this out, though.

Probably because you were sitting near the front, the edges of the screen seemed unimportant.

They were miles away.

You thought they were
absolutely miles away.

Whereas now I'm very,
very aware of the edges

of the screen, often
making a pokey picture.

But at that time I never
thought any picture was pokey

because it was offering you
another world from dingy Bradford.

Remember, you're walking through dingy
streets to a little local cinema, and when you

come out, you've been all over, you've
been in the French Revolution or somewhere.

So you come out with
your imagination working.

It was pictures, pictures, pictures.

I've always said, in a way, I was
brought up in Hollywood and Bradford,

because most of the films we saw
were American, when I think of it.

I went to the cinema a lot
and we'd go home on the bus.

I'd always go upstairs
to the front of the bus.

I always traveled
upstairs on the bus, always

on the front seat, so
you could see more.

I always wanted to see more.

I, uh, was coming back from
New York, and I'd bought in

New York some nudist magazines,
some male nudist magazines.

And at the airport the customs
man, who was about 22 years

old, opened the bag, and
they sorted out the magazines.

If they were completely nude, he put
them on one side and if they were not

quite nude, he put them on another side
and then they kept the nude magazines.

And I protested and said, "Oh, come on.
Don't be silly. Just give me them back."

And this, that and the other.
And they took them away.

And I kept phoning up the
customs office in the city.

And I kept speaking to a man.

I don't know what his name
was, Mr. Hittet, Hillet or something.

And he said, "Oh, they
are definitely pornographic."

He'd looked through, and in one of the photographs the boys had painted their genitals with psychedelic colors.

And I just didn't know
what to say to somebody

who didn't think that
was amusing or funny.

And then in the end I had to get a lawyer,
and I showed him magazines of a similar

kind, and the moment the lawyer wrote the
letter to them, they immediately came back.

And a man appeared on the doorstep in a
peaked cap with a big envelope marked "On

"On Her Majesty's Service" and said, "You
know what these are," and handed them in.

David became particularly intrigued at the Royal
College of Art because I had a lot of magazines like

American Model Guild and
Physique Pictorial stuck up

in my cubicle, and this
fascinated him, of course.

I was very out already in New York, despite the fact
that it was the '60s, and I had a lot of trouble

being out and I'd been beaten up several times by,
you know, anti-gay homophobes, but I just didn't care.

And I thought, well, you know,
England is probably okay, you know.

Nobody cares there
about this sort of stuff.

And he was intrigued to meet somebody
who was so out, because I don't think he

knew anybody at that point who was quite
out, and so we became very close friends.

A couple of times I've
shared a bed with Hockney,

and once was I was
stuck for somewhere to kip.

Has anyone ever mentioned his five-foot-tall
turquoise teddy bear that he had?

This fucking great teddy
bear from here to the wall,

with big eyes it had, and
it's turquoise sort of fluff.

So this went down the middle
of the bed, you see, between

sort of like straights and
gays, if you know what I mean.

And I was this side, you see,
and this fucking great teddy bear.

And you couldn't even see David.

And then the next morning, we both woke up.

And David sort of does this sit up in
bed above this turquoise teddy bear,

and no glasses, you see, and he
sort of goes... He sort of goes like this.

He sort of goes, "Hello!"

The paintings all related,
whether superficially or

intensely, on his life and
his trying to deal with his

homosexuality, and trying
to deal with his fantasies,

and trying to deal with the
issues of a sexual identity.

And he used wit to
play with these identities.

He was really like a little
high-school girl about it, really.

I mean, it-it was all fantasy
and some sort of cutesy stuff.

I mean, like his fantasies about...

Who is that rock
singer? Cliff Richard.

I don't think he had had
sex at any point yet with a

man, but I think he certainly
fantasized a lot about it.

With David it was probably something about a way
to get out something about himself, but I don't know

if that was the core of the painting, because,
you know, it's not just pictures of men fucking.

There's something much more in there.

And homosexuality, it's
sort of a witty side issue.

Even if it seems to be the subject of the
painting, it's not the subject of the painting.

If anything, the homosexual
elements in his paintings,

for me, were points to
roam into the painting

and see other things and
give clues to maybe parts

of the painting, but
they weren't the painting.

♪ "L" is for the way you look at me ♪

♪ "O" is for the only one I see ♪

♪ "V" is very, very extraordinary ♪

♪ "E" is even more than
anyone that you adore can love ♪

When I went to Los Angeles, it was really...

three times better than
I thought it would be.

♪ Just a game for two

I thought, "Well, this is it.
Hollywood is near here."

And I'd just read an American novel called City
of Night by John Rechy, which has accounts of kind

of low life in American cities, and I thought it
was all wonderful and colorful and everything.

But, um, I wanted to get up to
Hollywood and see what it was

all like and see the hustlers
and the scene and everything.

And I bought a bicycle to go
there, because I didn't know how to

get there, and, of course, it's
about 16 miles from Santa Monica.

"Later I would think of America as
one vast city of night stretching gaudily

from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard,
jukebox winking, rock 'n' roll moaning.

America at night fusing its dark cities
into the unmistakable shape of loneliness.

Remember Pershing Square and
the apathetic palm trees, one-night

sex and cigarette smoke and
rooms squashed in by loneliness.

And I would remember lives
lived out darkly in that vast city

of night, from all-night movies
to Beverly Hills mansions."

I got there and realized there
was nobody in Pershing Square.

It had all altered, this
empty thing, big palm trees.

And I did find a bar later, but it
was then I realized, well, I need a car.

You just need a car.
A bicycle won't do, I mean.

So I gave the bicycle
away and bought a car.

I used to work on a morning,
and then in the afternoon it

got very hot and sunny, so
I'd go and lie on the beach.

And then I'd work again in the evening.

And I'd maybe work
until about 10:00 or 11:00.

And then I'd go for a drink, you see.

In California the bars don't close until 2:00,
which seems to me, in a way, the ideal hour.

If you're going to close
them at all, it's the ideal hour.

Because in a way it's not too late, and you can make up your mind about things, I suppose, you see, at 2:00.

4:00 is a bit late, really.

You can go in a bar and meet the equivalent of a
plumber from Brooklyn could be sat at the next stool,

and some other guy, you
know, a moviemaker from

Hollywood could be sat
at the... on the next stool.

I mean, that can happen.
In London, you can't.

Los Angeles to, uh, David meant surfers.

And there were a lot of boys around.

And, uh... And all that was, uh, I think, very
erotic and beautiful to David, and he depicted it.

It was 1964, and Chris Isherwood phoned and
said that a young English artist had phoned

him who was here in Santa Monica and could
he come by and visit Chris on an afternoon?

And Chris said, "Of course."

David Hockney arrived very dyed
blonde, in my memory was in a gold jacket.

Chris was a distinguished
writer, and I suppose

the most famous
British queer living in LA.

And, yes, David would have known about
him and would have read his books too.

We'd already been together 15 years, and at
that time that was considered phenomenal.

Two men living together and 30
years difference between them,

and they haven't, uh, shot
one another or at least split up.

Yeah.

He took a lot of photographs and
even did some preliminary drawings.

Chris, he got that figure in
the painting right away, and you

can tell from looking at the
painting, it's very freshly painted.

It was a really first version.

And it was good. I kept it.

And, of course, he had the
photographs to-to remind him.

The painting of me is much
heavier technique, if you look closely.

He had a lot of trouble with me.

I think it may have given David
the idea of finding a partner

for himself, since it seemed
to work well for Chris and me.

David met a student at
UCLA during the summer,

Peter Schlesinger, and
he liked Peter very much.

I believe Peter was what
David was somehow looking for.

But he called once,
and he was taking this

young student of his
from Tarzana in the Valley.

There's a place called Tarzana where...

Burroughs lived in
Tarzana and created Tarzan.

Edgar Rice Burroughs
created it in the Valley.

And so it's called Tarzana.

And... And David did a now famous painting
of Peter which is called The Room Tarzana.

He was a very attractive
young man and quite beautiful.

And, yes, I think David
was enchanted by him.

Neither had ever lived in a
romantic relationship with a

partner, and that made it a
lot of fun to be around them.

My first encounter was with a
picture, not with David as a person.

I was captured by Doll Boy as a
picture that seemed to me original

and gay in the old sense of the
word and, uh, rule breaking and witty.

I particularly liked that
painting and, at that time, had

sufficient money to buy it outright
and then wanted to meet David.

David acquired fans with enormous facility.

Cecil Beaton had already bought a picture
on one of his visits to the Royal College.

It was a time when Snowdon was making
photographs for a book called Private View,

and people saw the potential in David as
someone that you could write a lot about.

I had great ambition at the time.

I wanted to show what I
thought of as the greatest art.

I'd formulated a pretty strong
idea of what I liked most, and

it was almost entirely American
abstract color field painting.

But, of course, in England I wanted to
represent what I thought was the best in

English painting, whether it fitted in
with all of the American taste or not.

And Hockney was the only
figurative artist that I found

interesting, exciting, that I
wanted to be the defender of.

You could say David was the only figurative
artist in a deadly serious abstract place.

But, in fact, the influence of the
ones on the other were quite strong.

I mean, a number of his pictures were painted
thinking about color field painting, you know.

He'd already pretty rapidly became
a blonde, a flamboyant dresser,

a maker of public statements.

I mean, the sort of person that
draws the attention of journalists.

And it was at the very moment when...

the eye of the press and the tastemakers was
on the British art world and fashion world.

And David stood out as one of
the banner carriers for the new

approach to art, life and, in fact,
the emerging openness of gay life.

David always had a sense of humor.

For instance, when Tony Snowdon
said, "Come round and have a look

at Kensington Palace," when he
was married to Princess Margaret.

Tony used to take great delight in those days showing
you the bathroom with the "M" and the coronet on

top of the lavatory seat, and saying, "You can have
a pee, you know, in Margaret's lav, if you like."

Then he asked David to sign the visitor's book, and David said, "No, no," he said, "I'm not gonna sign that.

I don't want my name in
there come the revolution."

In 1962, I'd been at a
demonstration in Trafalgar Square.

When it was over, I thought I'd come
in the National Gallery and have a look

at frescoes by Domenichino from a
room in the Villa Aldobrandini near Rome.

Then I became fascinated
with things about the pictures.

The space of the picture,
you see, is really only one foot.

As you can see here, there's the picture
begins here, and there's some floor.

And the dwarf that you see is stood in front of
this tapestry, which is the back of the picture.

The picture is only the depth of a person,
as a matter of fact, which is about one foot.

So I did my version of this painting.

You can see the tapestry quite clearly, and
you can see I've painted a fleur-de-lis border.

And instead of a
dwarf, I got a friend.

In fact, he's an art dealer
called Kasmin, to pose for me.

And I defined the front of the picture by
putting a sheet of glass over this section.

And I got Kas to pose for
this, and I did some drawings.

And I took some photographs
of him pressed against the glass.

And so my figure is trapped between the tapestry and the glass.

In fact, the idea of that
painting I've kept repeating and

repeating, and, um, the idea
of a border still interests me.

For example, here's another
painting that I did in Hollywood.

Because it's got a border round it, you cannot,
as it were, walk straight into the picture.

If it's got a border, it's like this rope being here,
and to climb into it, you've got to climb over this,

you see, and then you'd
have to go onto the diving board

and fall into the swimming
pool and there's the splash.

Henry Geldzahler was a curator
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- Hello?
- Hi, Dave. It's Henry.

It was obvious that David was
the most important person in his life.

They spoke on the telephone
almost every day for 20 or 30 minutes.

Of course, in those days
there were no mobile phones.

There was a table where the
telephone sat, and you had conversations.

So I got to know David through one-sided
phone conversations that Henry was

having with him, and I realized they shared
absolutely every aspect of their life.

The art, the books, the friendships,
the lovers, the gossip, everything.

It was total friendship.

David was essentially a figure of
the 19th century in many respects.

The literature, the art, the music that he was
deeply involved in, much of it was 19th century.

The same was true of Henry.

That's what David loved about Henry.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, David
was a very unfashionable artist.

He was involved with poetry, literature.

He wanted to bring all
of these things into his art.

So David was engaging all
of these subjects that most

artists were working very
hard to eliminate from their work.

He was, in many ways, a figure who was
excluded from the contemporary dialogue

that was taking place, and to have
Henry's imprimatur, interest, friendship...

I think it meant a great deal to him.

And he was not shy about telling David
what he liked and what he didn't like about

both his art and his personality, but he
always did it in a very loving, gentle way.

One of the things that David
relied on Henry

every six months or so would be to go
through a stack of drawings.

And every now and then
there'd be something and Henry

would pick it up and tear
it up, throw it in the trash.

If next week this country did collapse but
on the very day it collapsed,

you met your absolute true love,

you wouldn't give two hoots about the bloody
place collapsing, would you?

I mean, you know, you'd think,
"Oh, all's right with the world."

If we have a sandwich and a
glass of beer, it doesn't matter.

Lots of David's portraits are
about togetherness, aren't they?

Togetherness is two people, and it's always
a kind of interesting equation for him.

'Cause in a way we're all alone, but it's nice to
be part of something and part of somebody else.

David and Ossie were really good pals.

Ossie was a very flamboyant character
in his own way, and single-minded.

In fact, his shows were
quite unique, and he'd bill the

music to the fashion models,
to the whole catwalk experience.

We were all pals together, and I
suppose, leading a certain bohemian life.

And it was very innocent then.

You were enjoying being young and in London
and doing things you really liked doing.

David asked Ossie and
myself if we'd pose for him.

I remember going to Powis Terrace
and him taking lots of photographs.

And I know, for instance, he couldn't
get Ossie's feet correctly painted,

so he put the shag pile carpet on
the floor and hid his feet in the carpet.

And he made the bedroom into the
sitting room because he wanted to

choose various things that he thought
were to do with our personalities.

I met Peter when he
first came over with David.

There was this new person to
engage with, and it was Peter.

I think he made a nice home for David.

I think he wanted to have a stylish home.

David had acquired the leases on
the surrounding flats and said would I

knock the walls down between them
and make a very lovely lateral apartment?

As far as I'm concerned, I just
designed the flat that I'd want for myself.

Little did I know I'd later have it.

David's quite sociable, so he likes to
give parties, to have people around.

So to have a big room at one end
of the apartment and at the other and

then a beautiful long gallery
between them, that was very appealing.

Peter dealt with curtains and
tiles and finishes and furniture.

Peter would go out and hunt for things, and then
he'd take David to see them and decide together.

He would go out to the market and
buy vases and, you know, bits and pieces.

But if it was like a big thing,
David would get very involved.

He was the first person I lived with, yeah.

Yeah, it was very nice. Very, very nice.

You know, when people said to me,
"Ah, well, when you said you were gay in

1960 or something, and, well, it
was illegal and this, that and the other."

And I said, "Well, I lived in Bohemia,
and Bohemia is a tolerant place."

When he's in London,
he quite often pops round.

He used to just ring the doorbell
and come in and prowl around.

Particularly, he liked going
into his old studio and just

standing there, remembering all
the great paintings he did there.

The clavichord was near a
doorway, which was near the window.

And so it was... I was leaning against it.

Yes, and it was...

With all our underwear all over the floor.

Wayne's jockstraps were everywhere.

Well, I needed them.

Uh...

I was playing A-flat, this note.

And I wanted to call
the painting, "A Flat".

- A Small Flat.
- A very small flat, yes.

But it was really a
painting about stillness.

I think it would have been
wonderful. It's unfinished.

The development of what
should have been a really beautiful, serene

happy, listening,
still painting became a huge

dilemma of mixtures of colors
and unfinished sequences and

painting out the floor and
repainting in the background.

And every time we went round there,
there was something different going on.

And I just thought,
"This will never get done."

He was worried about something
called the vanishing point.

I think the problem wasn't
really the vanishing point.

It was the vanishing Peter.

David was splitting up with Peter, and that was a
very upsetting period for both of them, actually.

David was very upset.

He was, I think, genuinely
in love with Peter.

They had their troubles.

But, you know, starting a relationship
is very tricky, even a man and a woman,

and the first time either of them had
ever been involved in such a relationship.

Of course they were going to have problems.

That was a very upsetting period.

I think he was taking
tranquilizers as well.

He was just crying a lot.

I mean, it had been a long period that he'd been with
Peter, and it was just suddenly a devastating point, which

actually did come through
the picture, because it was an

unfinished scene, like his
life was unfinished without him.

I think there were periods of depression.

I have films of him lying on the water bed,
obviously very depressed, being comforted by Henry.

Whether that was related to the breakup
with Peter, or whether that was just

something that is endemic to his
personality, I've never been absolutely sure.

He can be extremely up, and then we've
all seen moods where he's not happy.

But he got a lot of support.

In the summer of '75 and '76, both he and Henry
stayed all summer at my house at the shore.

It was right on the beach.

He liked being there,
and he liked painting.

He uses his work to escape the world.

And I remember he'd sit there in the living room and
paint and eat out of this huge barrel of something.

It wasn't potato chips or something.

Pretty soon the floor would be covered with
them like they were sawdust or something.

It was an absolutely...
It was a unique time.

That's where he started the Blue
Guitar series. I think that was in '76.

I'm not sure whether that
idea came from Henry or...

'Cause Henry read a lot, read a lot of
poetry, but David always read a lot too.

So I don't know who got the idea, but
he spent all summer doing that series.

I mean, I'd begun the etchings,
then I thought, the title...

I just thought I would call it The
Blue Guitar by David Hockney,

inspired by Wallace Stevens,
who was inspired by Pablo Picasso.

And the names could get
bigger as they go down.

The source of the poem was
a painting of Picasso,

and so I'm turning the poem back
into a painting and etchings.

"They said," You have a blue guitar.

You do not play things as they are.'

The man replied, "Things as they are are
changed upon the blue guitar.'

And they said then, "But play
you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

a tune upon the blue
guitar of things exactly as they are.'"

When I read it, see, I loved the phrase,
"You do not play things as they are,"

because the philistine response to Picasso
was, "You do not paint things as they are."

Well, there's no such
thing as "things as they are."

In painting, where you deceive the eye with all
sorts of devices to make things look as they are...

I don't know. The poem just
triggered ideas in my head.

So I started making drawings
which are just inventions,

which was a change for
me from the past two years.

In the painting, for
instance, there's things.

The colored line right at the top is simply a
colored line, so that's absolutely as it is.

There's no illusion there.

But the water falling is illusionistic.

And you make references
to other kinds of painting.

I mean, playing games like
that seemed such fun to me.

I just went on and on.

The work has always
been this core of David's life.

The first breakup was
very difficult for him.

But the art is the thing that gives
him the anchor in life and in the world.

I mean, I think anything that
happens, as long as he's able to see

the world through his painting
and stuff, he could survive anything.

You know, I've taken
photographs for a long, long time,

and I have about a hundred
albums full of photographs.

All my life. It's all recorded pictorially.

Most people who ever come
into it I photograph in some way.

And later maybe I draw them, but
usually I don't draw them instantly.

I just take a snap. It is like a diary.

I'm just a snapper, really.

We see so many photographic
images and film images, and they're

so mainstream, we're so used
to thinking of those as the way

of representing the world, but
he knows that one can do things

with painting that one cannot do
with photographic technologies.

One can express visions of the world, ways of
seeing, that invite you to look at things that

you would only just glance at if it was a
photograph or even if you were seeing it in reality.

He's introducing something much
more personal, something more moving.

And he's trying with many tactics
to show that painting can do this.

I'd become very, very aware of this
frozen moment that was very unreal to me.

The photographs didn't really have
life in the way a drawing or painting did.

And I realized it couldn't
because of what it is.

Compared to Rembrandt
looking at himself for hours and

hours and scrutinizing his
face and putting all these hours

into the picture that you're
going to look at, naturally,

there's many more hours
there than even you can give it.

A photograph is the other way round.

It's a fraction of a second, frozen.

So the moment you've looked
at it for even four seconds,

you're looking at it for far
more than the camera did.

And I... it dawned on me
that this was visible, actually.

It is visible.

And the more you become aware of
it, the more this is a terrible weakness.

Drawings and paintings do not have this.

I made a little photographic experiment with the
Polaroid by putting 30 of them together,

made a photograph of this
house in a way that I'd been

trying to paint the house
from three different viewpoints.

And the photograph excited me so much.

And... well, time was appearing in the picture and
because of it, space, a bigger illusion of space.

Now, the space is an
illusion. I was aware of that.

But the time is not an illusion.

It is real and accounted
for in the number of pictures.

You know it took time to take them,
wait for them, put them down and so on.

And this began... I realized was giving you
this illusion of space that we had not seen...

I had not seen in a photograph before.

I'm interested in pictures made any way
and the visible world and representing it.

That's why Picasso is always interesting.

He never left the visible world,
never left depiction, actually.

His greatest hero for most of his life has
been Pablo Picasso, whose art moves through

phases and different approaches and styles
with great frequency throughout a long life.

So David's aware of the fact that almost everything he
does is going to sell the second he's put his name to it.

And he does not want to become a
machine for producing items of value.

He frequently ran into periods when
he was dissatisfied with what he was

doing and was thrashing about looking
for new and different ways of doing it.

He did not like just going on using
his immense facility for drawing.

Didn't satisfy his ambition.

Surfaces that you can decide where
to look I find fascinating, you know.

In a way, with water,

you can look at a reflection.

Then you're looking at the surface.

Or you can suddenly take the
reflection away and look through it.

And somehow the problem of
depicting it becomes a wonderful way of,

in your head, thinking of graphic
terms and devices to depict it all.

The early ones are done with
very, very stylized form in the water.

Jigsaw shapes with a heavy blue
line describing the interlocking shapes,

as though somebody's jumped in
the pool and all the shapes are dancing.

The painting called The Sunbather,
the dancing line is yellow, which happens

if it's very sunny and you get
this dancing yellow line all the time.

Later on, I could make the water look very fluid and wet
by putting acrylic paint that was very, very diluted,

and you put a detergent in it, so when you paint on
the canvas, the canvas soaks it up like blotting paper.

Even the painting of the splash, for
instance, somehow what I quite liked about

doing it was the perversity of painting
something that lasts for one second.

But it took me seven days'
work to paint the splash itself.

If you look carefully, it's painted
in single lines with a small brush.

I like the idea, you see, of a realistic
painting of a real figure looking

at another figure, but the other
figure is distorted naturally by the water.

I was the technical director when
the Met opened the French triple bill.

What we did was to
take David's pieces...

In the case of Parade,
the ideas of someone who's

basically not working all
the time in the theater...

And translate them to the stage, but add
the things that you know that make it work.

I think the challenges were,
for him, just the scale of things.

This is a model of the
Metropolitan Opera stage.

And the story of the opera
is about a naughty child.

And the little boy says, "I'm fed up
of being good. I want to be wicked."

So he picks up a poker from the fireplace, he
runs around the room, he smashes the teapot.

Very shortly after the Met
reopened, there was Parade, in the

winter-time when everyone is
desperate for light and color.

And here is something
totally fresh, totally new,

something unlike anyone
had ever seen at the Met.

And I think it just...

It lifted people's spirits, and it
kind of took them to a different place.

And David was a major
instrument in having that happen.

Henry and David in Europe...

They would arrive in a European
city and immediately go to

the opera house, look to see
what was playing, get tickets.

Then they'd go to the museum.

Then they'd have lunch and
they'd go back to the hotel.

Henry would write. David would have
his sketch pad and his colored pencils.

Then they'd have a nap.

Then they'd come out, have
dinner, go to the opera house.

There's a lot of music.

There's often four minutes
of music with nobody

singing, which means you're
to be looking at something.

In fact, you're to be
looking at something in an

interesting way to hear
that music, to really hear it.

So we'll figure a
way, you know...

Just slowly reveal
the forest and so on.

I mean, just do it very slowly.

Tristan and Isolde, I worked
for a year in here on it.

One year, actually, it took, matching the
music and getting the colors and things.

It was a long, big job.

I used to sit up
here with it, and I'd...

We had a big model with
lights, and I had all these

little lights where I could
change it and do things.

Sometimes I'd smoke a joint and then put
on the music and fiddle with the lights.

It was terrific,
actually, that... doing it.

And, I must confess, the other night I
saw Tosca, and it suddenly occurred to me

that the only Puccini opera that doesn't
have a lot of cruelty in it is Bohème.

At least she dies from TB.

This opera... not only does nobody die, it
ends on the best note of hope

I've ever come across
on a musical stage, I think,

that there is real hope
for us wretched people.

This is actually the drawing
we're finally using to make the set

for the Poulenc opera, which is
a scene in the South of France.

It's supposed to
be jolly and pretty.

Unlike some designers and unlike some artists,
David was completely swept up with the music.

To him, the music suggested visual
things, and I think that was a big appeal.

And one of the things that often is missing in theatrical
productions is that kind of reverence for... for

the work of art, but also a kind of willingness to
be completely one with its slightly sentimental side.

And David loved that.

It's gone now for me... music.

I don't go to the opera anymore
because I can't really hear it.

I mean, I'd have to sit right
at the front or something.

I mean, I don't go because if you
go, I leave the theater a bit depressed.

Well, he's just coming off of the theater
work, okay, and he's fed up with that.

He doesn't know what he wants to do next,
and he is kind of loose at this moment.

And he's visiting friends, and
he's having a good time in

New York, and he comes over for
dinner, okay, to see what I'm up about.

And so I show him the great
Ellsworth Kelly paper images.

And he's absolutely thunderstruck.

He's moved, really moved.

And he also said, you know, "These,
Ken, are fantastic. How are they made?"

So I said, "Well, you know,
stay for... you know, after dinner.

Stay till tomorrow and I'll show you.

We'll make up a couple of pieces of
paper and I'll show you how it's done."

That's the turn-on, you know.
"Oh, you'll show me? Okay."

So we started to play.

At first he kvetched about,
"Oh, I don't wanna do this.

I have to make every one
of these myself," you know.

"They're not reproducible.

I don't know whether I wanna do all these."

But he did all these, and every time he did
a new one, he wanted to make another one.

And we wound up
working 18 hours a day.

I mean, it was slave
labor for 49 days.

All of us just loved it. We
couldn't get enough of it.

Because each and every piece
he made was just one more note

of greatness that he was
putting down for us to hear, to see.

And he knew that he was onto
something as much as we did.

I think Paper Pools helped
him tremendously in his painting.

Yeah, I really do.

Because I think it freed him up.

I think it also gave him a different kind of
idea about color, how to use color more boldly.

Come on, Stanley. Come on.

David loved having the dachshunds
down there and walking on the beach.

But I think ultimately, David's
house in Malibu, it wasn't very David.

I mean, it was very David in its kind of hominess,
but I don't think it ever became his home.

I mean, David's never been a weekend
person, so I thought it was a bit strange.

And it was decorated very nicely and cozy.

It was very funky and old-fashioned,
unlike slick Malibu at the time.

But as anybody that's lived in LA
knows, it's actually a long way to

go to go have lunch or to have a
dinner or get in the car and drive.

It was a transitional time.

A lot of David's older friends
were not there all the time.

It was a world in the 1970s where to be
gay was to be beautiful and fashionable.

The whole world was right
there in the palm of your hands.

When David came to New York,
a lot of times he was here to party.

He would go to the baths.
He would go out to the bars.

He was having a good time.

And then all of a sudden, AIDS
came along, and suddenly things

went exactly in the opposite
direction, and it was like a plague.

One person after the next would come down with
AIDS, and it was quite simply a death sentence.

I think it was something
that shook David to his core.

You think about them every day and then you stop
it, because there's too many, actually, uh...

It would rather drive you
mad if you think about it.

And slowly you have to
realize it's kind of part of...

It's become part of
your life, this, uh...

Something you never, ever expected.

At the time, I couldn't
write down all the people.

I mean,

it did change New York.

I think it's that that changed it
more than anything else, because I...

When I think of all those people...

If they were still there in New York, New
York would be different today. It would.

There would be Bohemia still.

And that's the world I arrived in,
and that's the world I lived in, actually.

Two-thirds of the people that he was really
close to suddenly just weren't there anymore.

They just disappeared.

And Henry... When Henry
died, it really was the final blow.

Of course, Henry didn't die
of anything to do with HIV or AIDS

but I think that
was a terrible blow for David.

When Henry died, it affected David, I
think, particularly badly because I think he

realized he was never going to find another
person who knew him as well as Henry did.

Truman Capote once said, "Love
is never having to finish a sentence."

And what that means is you're so much
on the same page with the other person,

you can begin a sentence, and they
immediately know what you're going to say.

It's that kind of communication that
Henry had with David and vice versa.

And when Henry died, that
was something that David

never really discovered
in anybody else again.

So I goes round to David's,
you see, one morning, and he's

got this color TV set, and he
says, "Would you like to see it?

Have you ever seen color TV?"

He switches it on, you see, and
he gets the color, and he turns

the color up right full on as far
as the knobs will go, you know.

And he goes, "Aye." And he
looks like this and he says, "Aye."

He says, "You can have it
fauvist if you want," you know.

♪ Happy birthday, dear David ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you

There's a wonderful self-portrait he did on his
birthday, where he literally took off his Brooks

Brothers red and white striped shirt and laid
it on the copying machine and printed it in red.

It's a wonderful... And then he
drew his face and did the self-portrait.

He has such bravura because he
has such amazing ability as a draftsman.

When the plain paper fax came,
where you could have individual

pieces of paper, David brought
back that pattern he uses

all the time of doing pictures
in grids, so that the small

piece of paper can suddenly
become this enormous picture.

Oh, it's tennis.

There's two players, a net in the middle.

He even sent a big show, a whole show, to
Brazil to the Biennale that he never went to.

He just gave the instructions of
how to put it up, and it was put up.

I think he thought it was amusing that
hand was coming back to this technology

that most people in business were using
to communicate contracts and legal deals.

I think he's always looking for new tools.

He takes something that seems
very common and every day.

And in 2009, David had already done, I
think, about 200 of the iPhone drawings.

Most of them were flowers.

We all got them in New York when
we woke up in the morning, so you'd

have this wonderful flower in the
sunlight of his bedroom window.

Then the iPad came out,

and then the drawings got so even
more amazing, but also you could do the

playback of the animation of the actual
drawing, which was a huge new thing.

Even David had never been able to
watch his own work as it was unfolding.

I think it was a real lens
into David's creative process.

Stanley. Good boy. Good boy.

He's a good boy.

Thank you. You're welcome.

I think that David wants
us to think differently.

He wants us to see
differently and think differently.

He makes you stand in the painting.

He makes you look up
and left and right and down.

The experience becomes a different
one from the traditional easel painting.

David thought that the idea of a viewer and
the vanishing point was very anti-humanistic.

And the idea of you being the
vanishing point and the world around you

opening up to you was almost a
religious concept in David's mind, I think.

I think there is possibly a
great connection between

the way we depict space
and the way we behave in it.

I've always thought perspective was a
problem, so anything that is now helping to

change it, like this photograph I did on
an iPhone, I find quite exciting, actually.

This is... This seems to me
to be widening perspectives.

It's a different
perspective, wider.

Things are opening
out, it seems to me.

It's better to go that
way than that way, I think.

That way is better
than doing that, I think.

He realized that there was a non photographic way
of seeing the world, which David really embraced.

Particularly because we don't
see the world through one eye.

We see the world through two eyes spatially, and I
think that the spaces of California, the Grand Canyon...

All of those things excited him.

And he always thought the painting could express
those things in ways that photography couldn't.

He always said one photograph
is not good enough,

and that photo collages were an attempt to
try to have a wider perspective.

He kept saying, "Wider
perspectives are needed now."

There are some good landscape photographs.

There are, but not that many.

Partly because, I mean,
cameras see surfaces.

They don't see space.

But we see space.

I think the thrill in landscape
is a spatial thrill, actually.

I think so.

Nature is the endless infinity, isn't it?

You always go back to nature for things.

I mean, that's what I was
doing in Yorkshire, yeah.

So now we've got an "I"
that's been made into an "X."

I hate to think about it.

See that letter there... That "X"?

Barney ate the "X," so I
had to make a new one.

So you had to make one from an "I."

And what about that missing
"I"? That's totally confused me now.

I realize what's thrown me out.

You never had too
many I's. It's lack of the "I."

Yeah, in this game. Sixty-five. That's "K."

"K."

I don't believe it. And you've got 177?

- What?
- And I'm 65?

- I'm 193.
- You've not been watching.

And also, you see, Barney
helping's not much help, really.

- No, he's a bit thick.
- He can't spell that good, really.

No, he can't spell at all.
Would you like the timer?

No, I would not, sir. Thank you.

My mother was a very, very strong woman.

She could look at me with piercing eyes.

Oh, there they are.

She died at 99.
She lived most of the 20th century.

She was born in 1900 and died in 1999.

Are you feeling it?

No.

Great! The queen's on!

She had four of her children there when
she died, so she was blessed, actually.

Cheers. Cheers.

I think her last act of will was
waiting for John to come from Australia.

Just a little bit, please. That's enough.

Yes, thank you.

The last night I stayed up with her, telling
her John would be here in a few minutes.

And then she died two hours later.

But he was very pleased that he'd
got there and she knew he'd got there.

I remember 1966, and I've
just arrived back in Bradford,

and you can tell I've just
come back from Hollywood.

And I put a cigarette in my mouth, and my
father's trying to take it out of my hand.

And that's 50 years ago now.

And I'm just about to
outlive him, I think, this year.

Back then, in the '50s, you've got to
remember that a young painter was 40.

So if you were going to be a painter, it
took a tremendous amount of commitment then,

that you had to face the fact that you'd
probably be digging roads or working

in the mill or anything until you
got old enough to be a young painter.

In those days, there was a
tremendous amount of aggression

going on, and I was involved
with various gangs and things.

I was all in all sorts
of fights, always was.

But Dave was much tougher than me.

He wasn't involved with fights and things.

But he'd go around with his bowler hat on and his moleskin
trousers, pushing a pram with an easel, canvas and paints.

And it takes a bit of strength to do that.

I couldn't have done that.

♪ "L" is for the way ♪

♪ You look at me ♪

When David left to go to America, he just changed
his pram for whatever else there was out there.

It was the same thing.

In a way, LA was another Bradford.

His whole outlook on things, in
many ways, has stayed the same.

I mean, there were things that opened up
for him, like the gay thing and all that.

I mean, that was a
tremendous influence on him.

But, basically, he's still searching.

♪ "L" is for the way ♪

♪ You look at me ♪

♪ "O" is for the only one I see ♪

♪ "V" is very, very ♪

♪ Extraordinary ♪

♪ "E" is even more ♪

♪ Than anyone that you adore can ♪

♪ Love is all that I can give to you ♪

♪ Love is more than just a game for two ♪

♪ Two in love can make it ♪

♪ Take my heart and please don't break it ♪

♪ Love was made for me and you ♪

♪ Love was made ♪

♪ For me and you ♪

♪ Love was made for me and you