All language subtitles for Great Art Series 2 1of5 David Hockney 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years,
we've been filming

the biggest exhibitions in the world

about some of the greatest artists
and art in history.

Not only did we record
these landmark shows

but we also gained privileged access
behind the scenes

of the galleries
and museums concerned.

We then used the exhibitions
as a springboard

to take a broader look.

In 2012, David Hockney, arguably
Britain's favourite artist...

In fact, there isn't
much of an argument there.

Anyway, he staged an exhibition here

at the Royal Academy
of Arts in London.

Entitled A Bigger Picture,
it was devoted entirely to landscape

and proved to be
extraordinarily popular.

We filmed that show, but then waited
until his next at the RA in 2016,

which centred on portraiture
with a little nod to still life, too.

The two exhibitions brought in
over 750,000 people,

emphatically showing the appeal of
an artist now into his ninth decade

but showing few signs of losing
his creative enthusiasm.

Not only were we able
to film these extraordinary shows,

we were also able
to interview David Hockney

on both occasions in London
and in his studio in LA.

Our aim was to see
if we could find out a little more

about one of the most
compelling artists in the world.

(INAUDIBLE)

David Hockney is one
of several artists

who emerged in Britain
after the Second World War

who took British art back up,
I suppose, to a very high level,

a level which it had been
in the early 19th century

with Turner and Constable.

But after the second World War,
with the advent of Francis Bacon,

Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach,
David, some others,

it went back to
that very high level.

And also, they collectively
did something

which, according to
some art critics and historians,

wasn't supposed to happen,

which is that they put
figurative art back centre stage.

I think David Hockney
is a quintessential British artist,

and he's one of
the great British artists

because he's got these
very British attitudes to painting,

that he paints what he sees.
He calls it eyeballing.

He likes to eyeball
a person or a landscape,

and he's also...
He's very interested
in the history of art himself.

He's very interested
in theories of art

and he's very aware of photography,

and he's speculated on
the connections and the differences

between painting and photography -

how does a painting resemble
a photograph

or how is it different
from a photograph?

And the conclusions he seems
to have come to at the moment

is that painting and drawing,
it's about hand, heart and mind.

It's about looking
and seeing and also feeling

and bringing all of that together
in a way that you can only do

by making a painting or a drawing,

that you can't do
if you just click a camera.

There's that kind of simple honesty
and bravery

and, actually,
an experimental quality

that is to do with
the nature of looking,

all of which keeps his art fresh
and keeps it good and important.

The Royal Academy has a special
relationship with David Hockney.

He was elected
a Royal Academician in 1991

and has exhibited his work here
regularly ever since.

Edith Devaney is one of
the senior curators at the Academy

who's worked with Hockney
over many years

and has overseen
both his major exhibitions here.

In my role as contemporary curator,

I am working a lot
with living artists,

and that's a very particular role
in itself.

And the ability
to keep in touch with artists

that you've worked with in the past,

to get to know new artists
to see what's happening

is absolutely critical.

There's also that thing
that's very hard to define,

and it's looking
for the right moment for things.

David's shows came about
a little bit like that,

but it was also because
I knew him quite well.

And I worked with him on a big work

for that year's summer exhibition
in 2007,

where he wanted to take up
one of the end walls,

and that was all
to do with landscape.

And, of course, by that stage,
he'd returned to Yorkshire

and he was doing quite
a considerable number of works

focused on the Yorkshire landscape.

And having the conversations
with him

around the production
of that landscape

made me think,
"There's something more here,

there's something that he hasn't
completely tapped into."

And I think his instinct
is to explore this whole genre more

and there's more to come.

When I put it to him that, actually,
we could do this show,

filling the main galleries,
just of Yorkshire landscapes,

he loved the challenge
and it took him about 12 hours
to agree to it.

And he was surprised
and completely delighted

and it became this wonderful journey
that we went on together.

TIM: David, the exhibition seems
set up as a kind of journey

through your engagement
with landscape painting.

Do you remember the circumstances
in which you painted

those two very early ones
in Bradford?

A little bit. Erm...

One reason that I pointed out,
they're the darkest paintings
in here

because they were done
with cheap paint,

a very cheap flake white,
and it goes dark.

I was at the arts school in Bradford

and they were painting out
en plein air.

I did paint a few pictures
of Bradford's streets.

But in those days,
you were always kind of trying

to avoid LS Lowry a bit,
a little bit.

They seem quite oppressive.

I'm fascinated by the fact
it's to do with the cheap paint.

But did you feel, at that stage,
that Yorkshire and West Yorkshire

and Bradford
were quite gloomy places?

Well, I did think that, yes.

I mean, I've pointed out, you know,
I love the cinema

and I've always noticed

the strong shadows in California
in films,

and you don't get those in Bradford.
And, er, yeah, I mean,

I knew there was a big wide world
somewhere else

and frankly, I was gonna go there
and look at it, yeah, I was.

So you travelled,
and again, in the exhibition,

we see the earliest results
of your travels.

There's an extraordinary painting
which is called The Flight to Italy,

but it's also subtitled
a Swiss Landscape.

What was that?
Was that your Grand Tour?

Well, it was, er,

I think, only the second time
I'd been on the Continent,

and someone offered me
and my American friend

a lift to Bern in Switzerland
in the back of a minivan.

Well, if you haven't much money,
you take this, of course,
and don't mind.

But, of course,
I couldn't see anything.

And I thought it was quite amusing,

you know, driving through
very spectacular Alps,

and I didn't really
see them for the first time,

but you could make
a painting of it somehow.

The style of that painting is...
In some ways, it's highly original,

and in other ways, one can refer
to what was happening in British

and international art
at the beginning of the '60s.

I think Marco Livingstone,
in the catalogue,

says there's a nice nod to
Harold Cohen in the abstract lines.

Yeah. I mean, remember,
this was a time

when abstract painting was dominant,
very, very dominant,

and any kind
of representational painting

was seen as a little bit reactionary
or something.

But, I mean, I always thought

that was a bit of
a mad view of things, I did,

erm, so you slightly
could mock it a little bit.

Was landscape a taboo subject?

Were you conscious of it being
a taboo subject then?

Er, yes, it was, when I look back.

And in a way, I didn't have
too much interest in it

until I went, in a way,
perhaps, to Egypt.

When I went to Egypt,
which was 1963,

was the first place I'd been ever
and I just drew it.

I didn't take a camera or anything.
I just took pencil and paper.

And then not long afterwards,
I went to California,

where, also, I reacted
to the place I was.

I actually began
painting Los Angeles.

I had never really painted London.

I mean, I do react to the places.

I mean, I react to the spaces
I'm in as well. I do.

From then on - that was the '60s -
I keep going back to landscape.

I keep going back
to portraits as well.

My mother died in 1999.

She was 99, and I began to...

Then my sister was in the hospital,
so I kept staying.

And then...I'd go back to LA,

but then a friend of mine
died in LA

that was someone very, very close.
I spent most of my evenings
with him.

And I just suddenly thought,
"Well, I'll go back to England
for a while.

I don't know what to do here."
And I did.

And I went up to Yorkshire
just to be quiet...

Thinking it'd be quieter
staying with my sister.

And then I simply began
to drive around,

looking at the landscape,
and realised it's very special,
the landscapes. Lovely, actually.

And I began by just...

I thought, "Well, maybe I'll just
go out and sit and...

sit and look at it
and find a way to make marks,

make a language,
find a language for it."

And when you're taking
things outside, to paint outside,

then you start having problems
if they get bigger.

Wind, rain, things, you know.

And the landscapes seemed big to me

and so I wanted
to make them bigger still.

And the reason we devised
this method was

it was the only method...

There was a limit
to the size of the canvas

I could get
in the studio in Bridlington
because of the stairs.

So, you know, if you didn't want
to re-stretch, there's a limit.

So I thought, "Well, if you just
put two or three together,

you've got a bigger canvas,
so you can do it like that."

You have to keep
a lot in your head, of course.

I mean, it was...

But it was an exciting thing
to be doing, I thought.

Then I did move into
a very large studio in Bridlington.

We were...We were actually just
looking for a storage space at first

but we found a place, I mean,
five minutes from the house

that was marvellously enormous,
I mean, really big,

and I realised there's
this marvellous even light
over this massive room.

Do you try, almost always,
to paint using daylight,

so you're replicating
the experience of being outside?

I do. I mean, I prefer the daylight.

I'm a day person, me.
I'm not a night person.

I go to bed quite early.
I get up early cos I like the light.

And in May and June in Britain,
I'll be up at 6:00

because the light is superb then
because you're on the east coast.

Most people will never see
the wolds lit wonderfully,

and the best time is, say, May
and June about 6:00 in the morning.

What are the fundamental differences
between oil paintings

that you realise in the studio

and the watercolours
and oil paintings that you realise

en plein air in situ?

Well, I mean, the ones en plein air

are based on you observing
and reacting to,

basically, what's in front of you.

I said I felt I needed
to do that for a while,

to look hard, to look hard at it

and devise methods
for dealing with it,

mark-making and so on.

Whereas in the big studio,

I mean, you start then using
different aspects of this.

I would use memory, for instance.

Once I got in the big studio
and I was planning bigger pictures,

I would often go out with a chair
and pick places and sit and look.

And knowing
you're going back to work

from the memory
you are dealing with now,

then start asking questions.

"What do I see first?

Does the bark of the tree
dominate to me?

Does that attract my eye? Does...?"

Because there's so much
to look at, really.

I mean, I think it's Bonheur said

he couldn't paint outside
because it was too confusing.

I mean, I know what he means
in a way. There is...
You have to edit it.

Visual distraction everywhere.
Yeah, painting is editing.

And there came a time when,
in a way, I virtually stopped

going out to draw and paint, then,
and I was doing it in the studio.

Does this work...?
Does the oil painting

feel like the culmination,

or is it just as much
a part of the process...

as part of the work
as the individual prints are?

Well, I mean, I think the prints
actually influence this painting.

Meaning the marks, now,
are a bit different

because the iPad has intervened.

So the marks being made here
I began to use in there.

But the marks are very visible
in these,

meaning it's like painting.

I'm deliberately...
aware to leave the marks behind.

And I'd always, then, planned
a very big painting,

and this is big enough for the wall.

So in a way, you could say
this work is site-specific.

Oh, this...
It's site-specific to the landscape,

but it's specific also,
in your mind, to this space.

Yeah, this was made for this room.

If you want to depict something
that's an action in nature,

which spring is...

Though winter isn't necessarily
an action.

Winter is there for two months.
It doesn't change much.

Spring and autumn are actions,
in a way,

that events happen
and it changes things.

So, I became aware
I wanted to deal with this.

So, when the Royal Academy asked me,
for instance...

I think they first suggested

the exhibition would be
in January 2011.

And I thought about it
and I suggested,

"No, January 2012 would be better,"

because I need so many springs.
I think four, I said.

And I wished to observe them
more carefully

to deal with how to do one, you see.

Did you see that
always, from the beginning,

as a single work,
a single installation?

Not quite from the beginning,
but soon after.

The thing was they had some snow.

So, I go out to draw the snow
in the car and on an iPad,

because I'm just in the car.

And I did two or three,
the first two or three,

and we printed them outside
and I pinned them up

and then I kept looking
and thinking,

"Oh, my God, you could use an iPad.
You could do it.

It's a very good technique.

I could develop these techniques
to show the changes in the road."

So it was only about mid-January,
about one year ago now

that I then realised,
"Yes, the whole room could be this."

I worked out how many approximately

and then realised,
"Well, if I begin now..."

Originally, I was going to begin
in April, when the activity
really begins,

but then I realised,
put the winter there first,

so you understand
how big the change is.

And because it's gradual, you know,
most people don't notice.

You have to be looking carefully
to follow it.

It's a very good job to observe
the arrival of spring.

Most people don't have it as a job,
do they, professionally?

But if you do, it's a very,

very wonderful experience
actually doing it.

What does an iPad give you

that working, say, in watercolour
or using a sketchbook doesn't?

Well, it's a new medium,
so there's gains and losses.

It is a new medium,
but the great gain is speed.

You've got all the colour, textures,
all there in your hands.

So, any draughtsman is interested
in speed. It means speed of drawing.

Sometimes drawing fast, you draw...

You're aware that Rembrandt
drew fast.

And you're aware that often,
drawing fast,

you might sacrifice accuracy
but you gain something else.

What you miss... What do you miss?

You miss resistance which paper has.

Here, it is incredibly smooth.

In a way, you're drawing on glass,
I suppose,

but the range of marks you can make
is enormous.

But I had become aware that
I'd done, maybe, 300 drawings

but you could only see them
one by one on an iPad.

And then I realised
to see them all,

you've got to just have
a traditional exhibition.

How will you see 30
and compare them?

I thought that was amusing,
you know.

I thought, "Well, yes, how do you
exhibit these things?"

Hockney's Yorkshire landscapes
are very varied, I think.

They're varied in quality,

they're varied in
what they're trying to do.

It was, kind of,
an experiment in making art.

I mean, it was a strange
and brave thing for Hockney,

who had made his home
so successfully
in the United States,

to return to Yorkshire,

to return to the landscapes
of his youth.

John Constable said that he painted
the landscapes of his youth.

Hockney's made a life
not of painting the landscapes
of his youth

but painting other landscapes,
other places.

He goes back to Yorkshire
and also goes back

to a Impressionist,
19th-century way of painting.

The way that Constable painted,
the way that Monet painted -

in other words,
standing in the open air,

trying to paint the motif in nature
directly from observation.

And the exhibition
that eventually resulted,

this huge exhibition
at the Royal Academy,

it was a fascinating exhibition

in which David Hockney
explored the idea

that you can still paint nature
and paint from nature

and paint landscapes
in the way that Monet painted them

or Constable painted them,
that you can still do that today

and it'd still be an important
and moving art.

I think it was a partial success
in those terms.

But it was a total success
as a experiment

and as an example of an artist
who doesn't rest on his laurels.

After finishing his immersion
in his native Yorkshire landscape,

Hockney returned
to Los Angeles in 2012,

and for a time, he wasn't sure
what it was he wanted to paint.

But eventually he turned
his attentions to another genre,

that of portraiture.

And four years later,
another extraordinary exhibition
at the Royal Academy

of 82 portraits and a still life,

all in the same format,
four by three,

with each of the sitters,

be they friends, artists,
people who were visiting the studio,

painted over a period of three days,
22 hours.

When the time had elapsed,
that was it.

Hockney finished,
took a couple of days' break

and then started again.

And in a way,
each of the works bears scrutiny,

but actually, it's one single
work of art, ultimately.

EDITH:
The landscape show was one of
the biggest things he's ever done.

Even he says that across his career

it was the biggest challenge
he was ever set

by an institution before,
to create that volume of work.

And what's interesting for us
is having, I guess, exhausted

the idea of looking at the landscape

and challenging our perception
of the landscape,

he goes from that great expanse
to the intimacy of the portrait.

He'd got used to sending me images

of all the works
that he was creating,

so we kept in touch that way
on a very, very regular basis.

After a while,
this incredible portrait
came through

of Jean-Pierre with his head
in his hands,

and David's subject was,

"This is a portrait of Jean-Pierre
but it could be a self-portrait."

And it was just an enormously,
kind of, poignant...

And we could see the link
to Van Gogh's Old Man In Sorrow,

and it was just
such a remarkable work.

And then, slowly
but becoming increasingly regular,

other portraits emerged.

DAVID:
Painted portraits are different
from photographed portraits.

These are painted portraits.
I just paint them.

It took me a little while
to get into it,

er, because...

I did some portraits first,

just having somebody sit.

I did two or three
and then I thought about it

and I thought,
"Well, I need the feet in, I think."

So in the end,
I got them on a platform.

And I did the first one

and the feet just came off
the bottom.

And so,
I did another one with Gregory

and put the feet in,
but the chair was wrong then.

That chair...at the side,
you wouldn't see the figure in it.

And so I quickly
got to a simpler chair.

I did about five or six portraits

quite quickly.

I mean, each one took three days.

And I'd realised

if you ask somebody to sit
for a portrait, which I did,

how long can they sit there?

I mean... And I thought,

"Well, three days. I could
ask people to give me three days,

and a portrait would be made
in three days."

I'm painting all the time

and the third day is slower.

The quickest painting
is when you start.

But when you're finishing,
the third day,

I'm... You know, you're just
putting on a few marks,
a few strokes,

and so it's slower,

what you're doing,
and deciding what you do.

But I have done them in three days.

I mean, I think you can paint
a portrait in three days.

I mean, you can paint a portrait
in an hour, actually.

I'd got it going
by about the sixth one or something,

and I decided on
just a plain background,

blue or green,

and I was going to concentrate
on the figure then, just the figure.

When he got to about 20 or 30,

I called him and said,
"Can I come and see you?"

And that's when I suggested
that we could do

a very contained exhibition
if he was able to fill this space,

which, of course...
He loves that sort of challenge.

And I knew, from working with him
on the landscape exhibition,

that he relishes that.

This is Margaret, your older sister.

Yes, and she came with Pauline.

I think she's comfortable with me.

You see, she's comfortable,
she's sat before.

She's sat many times, hasn't she?

Yes, and so
she's comfortable with me,

whereas Pauline wasn't quite.

They're just drawn and painted.

And I draw it out

in about 45 minutes, I think.

Charcoal straight onto the canvas.
Charcoal straight onto the canvas.

And then I start painting,
putting in the background and things

and that's all I'm doing.
But she's very much at ease,
isn't she?

Yeah, she is. She's sitting at ease.

She knows what to expect,
she's done it so many times before.

Yeah. And she's looking at me. Yes.
Absolutely looking at me. Yeah.

Once the eyes are in there
like that,

I wouldn't touch them, yeah.

What you can do now is demystify
how David Hockney creates a drawing,

and it is absolutely fascinating
to watch it.

His hands just are fluid,
and the lines,

and you can see those pauses
when he's looking up

and he's working out
his perspective.

But there's a moment
at which there's...

I can only call it a kind of magic
comes into play,

and you think, "No, he's got it now,
and I'm still not quite sure...

I've been watching it
but I'm still not quite sure

how he's achieved it."

I mean, to see yourself painted,

to see the finished product,
is a very strange thing

because it wasn't me
as I understood myself to look.

So it's not like
looking in the mirror.

You're sitting there for three days.
You can't hold an expression,

so your expression
has to be one that's quite neutral.

So it's not one
that you often see yourself.

And the one that's in the exhibition
is actually the second portrait
he did of me.

And when I was leaving...
After having that done,
I stayed with him for a few days,

and he said to me,
"You're happy with it, aren't you?"

And I said,
"David, I love it. It's fantastic."

And I said,
"Do you think you got me?"

And he said,
"Well, I've got an aspect of you."

The fact that none of these
are commissions is
a very important thing,

because we all went
with no expectations.

We weren't paying for it,
so we had no expectations.

So we weren't able to say,
"Can you make me look
more youthful?"

or, "Can you make sure that
you square up my shoulders?"

There was none of that,
which gave him absolute freedom

and was a very important aspect
of the series.

This still life is quite early
in the series

and when David sent it
through to me,

I saw it first on my iPhone
and thought,

"Ah, well, that's just glorious.
It's just gorgeous."

And when I went to LA, then,
and looked at the still life

and talked about having
a portrait exhibition,

I said, "Couldn't we just
put that in? It's a kind
of a portrait, too, isn't it?"

And so, we always joked
about including it

and in the end, we did.
We decided to,

and David came up with the title
82 Portraits...

It was changing all the time.

It started off as
'70-something Portraits'
and kept going up,

but it remained
'..and 1 Still-life'.

David, this is the first time
you've shown at the Royal Academy

since 2012.

600,000 people visited it,
that exhibition, here at the Academy.

1.2 million in total.

And then four years later,

here we are with a new series,
portraiture.

Is this a more intimate reaction
to the sublime space of landscape

that made you want to
turn your attention
to the human figure again?

Well, I mean, when I began,

of course,
I didn't plan it like this.

I mean, I just began
with that picture of JP.

JP like this.

Even then, I mean, there was a month
before I did anything else.

You'd been ill and a friend of yours
had died in tragic circumstances.

Yeah. Well, we went back
to California

because we were going to do
a show in San Francisco

and we'd got back
and Bridlington went with us.

We were very down.

I just began drawing
in the garden a bit.

I mean, it was about a month later
and JP was sitting there like this

and I suddenly thought,
"I'll paint. I'll paint."

Is there a sense...
Redemption is perhaps

too broad an idea,
but if you started off

with you
and one of your closest friends

feeling so down about the world,
there does seem a lightness.

So you could almost see it
as a journey into light.

Is that too simple?
Well, yes, it was.

I mean, er, I think you can see

I get to feel better and better.

So is painting cathartic for you?
Has it always been cathartic
to some extent?

Yes, yes. I mean, I really
enjoyed doing them. I did.

Each one was quite hard.

I mean, each one,
I had to start and draw it,

and that was quite tense, doing it.

But I did thoroughly
enjoy doing them. I did.

A different acrylic paint
at the beginning...

You shifted the particular paint,
didn't you?

Er, yes, well, the first...
Larry and Jonathan there,

they were with Liquitex,
which dries very quickly,

and then JP found
this other acrylic paint
that has more gel init,

so it dries slower

and you can work on the faces
and blend and things like that.

And so, I think...
I think this was paint made for me,

made for my method of painting.

And it is, and it dries overnight,
of course.

Each day, JP would photograph them,

and he'd send me,
on the iPad, the picture

at the end of the day.

And then I'd look at it
in the bedroom

and then the next day I'd know

exactly how to start again,
what to do.

And so...I'm saying
it's a 20-hour exposure,

but it's actually longer

because I did look at them,
study it,

and that's how they were done.

I think there's a happiness
to these paintings.

He's enjoying himself. But also,
he's not trying to be Lucian Freud.

He's not trying to do
traditional portraits here at all.

If you look at them, the thing
that stayed in my mind from them

is the colours.
The colours are superb.

They're full of fizzing colour.

And what he's really looking at is
the clothes the people are wearing,

all the bright colours
that they're wearing,

and I think he was very much
thinking about Matisse

and Matisse's art
and the expressiveness of colour.

There's actually a game going on
in which he's enjoying

and exploring the power of colour
to scintillate,

and the effect is very strong,

that while you might
go up to an individual
in one of those paintings

and say, "Oh, it doesn't look
like any..." (MUMBLES)

what you actually come away with
is the colours

and the emotional work
that the colours do.

Just as Matisse
used colour to express things,

Hockney there
gives you a vibrant fizz

of life-enhancing, redemptive,

joyous colour.

MARTIN: Posing for a portrait
to David Hockney

was a very different experience
from posing to Lucian Freud,

which is another experience I had

and, actually,
David Hockney had himself,

and that difference was, I think,
partly because of

David's conception of the series,
that it...

Each picture was, as he put it,
a 20-hour take.

So he'd constricted himself,
not to a very short period,

but to a relatively short
period of time.

In contrast,
a Freud portrait might take

130, 140, 150 hours,

so it's a lot more time.

And so David was concentrating
pretty hard

on just the business of observing
and painting while he was at work.

Lucian would put down the brush
and reminisce

and spend a lot of time
mixing up paints, chatting,

then concentrate for a bit.

David was concentrating
absolutely 100% of the time

during the sittings
and more or less in silence.

He would say the occasional thing -

"You can move your foot a bit now,"

that kind of thing,
but not anecdote, not conversation.

That came afterwards,
when one sat down
and we relaxed on thesofa

and he'd have a look at the picture,
and then he might start chatting.

So he was actually
a rather different person

from the social David Hockney,

who is
a great conversationalist, actually.

The artist David Hockney
was largely silent and an observer.

What David's got is me looking
very hard at what he's doing,

how he's operating with his palette,

what the difference is
and the procedure is

here in the Hockney studio.

So I look rather, despite jet-lag,

rather bright and alert
in that picture.

Every sitter you chose was known
to you. Is that right? Oh, yes.

I mean, everybody I know,
everyone I know...

And you consider this
a single work of art.

It's a continuous work
of 83 paintings.

Well, I think so, yes.
I mean, I've kept them...

I'm going to do more
when I get back.

I mean, I've done...

Actually, I've done about 94
because we left some out.

I painted one or two people
three times, some twice.

I only left out one person

who had given me three days,

but I did point out he was
the only person not looking at me.

Interesting. So, Rembrandt once said
that every painting he made,

to a certain extent,
was a self-portrait.

There is no explicit
self-portrait here.

Do you see these as extensions
of the self sometimes,

or were you quite remote
or dispassionate when making them?

Well, I did them, I painted them.

They did get clearer.

I mean, if you look at
the first ones

and then look at the last ones
just over there,

you can see how the colour
gets stronger,

the drawing gets stronger.

They get more resolve
because you have a facility,

you realise what it is you're doing.
It becomes easier.

Yes, and I understand more
what I'm doing.

By the time I got to paint
Little Rufus...

he understood what I was doing.

Well, both his parents are artists.
But I wonder whether

there came a moment
where you systematically

wanted to paint the ages of man,
or mankind, from 11 to 80,

or whether that was just
in the nature of the people
that you knew.

Well, I mean,
I became aware of that.

I mean, I became aware
I was painting people...

I mean, Leon Banks was 92.

Rita's 91.

And then I thought,

"Well, I'd like to do
some young people as well."

So, actually, there's all ages here.
There is.

And as they built up,

when I'd done 40, say,

I would then hang them up,

even when they were just first done.

I'd hang them up to make sure
they were different from the others,

because all their legs
are different, the way they are,

what happens with
the feet and things.

None jump out because
they all jump out.

You have to look at them all
because they're all individuals.

You seem to have
as much curiosity now

as you did ten years ago,
20 years ago, 50 years ago.

But as you get older,
do you have to try sometimes

to step outside the artist
you've become?

Or is it just part
of your natural curiosity

to make things anew every time?
Well, I am naturally curious.

I mean, we went to China last year,

and they were animating scrolls

and I thought they were superb.

I think... Well, there was
thousands of scrolls.

Well, a scroll, only one person
at a time can see them,

but now with these big screens
and animation,

I mean, they can look back
at their past art

and now do it on a whole new way.

I think that's
very exciting, actually.

I think there's a lot you can do
with painting now, a lot more.

And you don't feel the pressure

of public expectation
when you make art?

Oh, no. I mean, I...

I live in LA very quietly
and I just think about painting.

I just now read and paint, really,

cos that's all I can do, and...

But I'm always thinking
about painting

and thinking about
what to do next, yes.

I mean, we've done
a great big Taschen book.

You know, I'm doing a...
One of these big SUMO books.

And that made me look back.

I found lots of things
from Bradford School of Art,

er, that I had forgotten about.

Does looking back give you ideas
to go forward,

or have you got plenty of ideas?
Well, it has, actually.

I mean, it made me see
a lot more what I'd done,

and I think,
"Well, yes, that was rather good

and I could develop that
a bit more now.

I didn't develop it enough."

When I go back,
I'm just gonna carry on.

I mean, you gotta have something
to do, don't ya?

And I do have something to do.

In terms of his standing
in the whole history of art,

he's done paintings
that'll never be forgotten,

paintings that defined an era.

So, I think to have done
definitive paintings of modern life

is a great achievement.

Whatever else he does,
whatever you think of other works
he may have done,

David Hockney is an artist
who will always be remembered,

and will always be remembered as...

in a happy way for someone
who had a sense of beauty.

I'm working more than I ever did.
I mean, er...

I'll tell you this.
People tell me to stop smoking.

I don't smoke when I paint,

but when I stop,
which I do occasionally

to look at,
to reassess what you're doing

and when will I do it,

that's when I have
a cigarette, usually.

And, er,

the people who tell me
to stop smoking,

they're telling me at that moment,
I should think about my body.

Well, I don't want to think
about my body.

I want to think about the painting.

Portraiture, landscape
and still life. What else is there?

(LAUGHS)

You might say. I don't know.

subtitles by Deluxe