David Hockney: A retrospective - Hardcover

Geldzahler, Henry; Knight, Christopher; Kitaj, R.B.; Schiff, Gert; Hoy, Anne; Silver, Kenneth E.; Weschler, Lawrence; Kitha, R.B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500235147 ISBN 13: 9780500235140

Publisher: Thames and Hudson, 1988

Synopsis

The English artist David Hockney is known world-wide for his colorful and classically composed images of sunshine, swimming pools, and the good life in California, for his prolific and innovative theater designs, and for his frank depictions of homosexual life and domesticity in which, long before the era of gay liberation, he unabashedly proclaimed his own sexual identity. Kenneth Silver, Professor of Art History at New York University, charts Hockney's multifaceted career from his early work of the 1960s, poised between abstraction and pop art's revival of figuration, to his most recent excursions into the high-tech world of computers and new print technologies.Also available in the Rizzoli ArtWillem de Kooning by David CateforisEdward Hopper by Karal Ann MarlingJasper Johns by Roberta BernsteinFrida Kahlo by Hayden HerreraRoy Lichtenstein by Diane WaldmanHenri Matisse by Roger BenjaminJoan Miró by Elizabeth HigdonGeorgia O'Keeffe by Barbara Buhler LynesPablo Picasso by Josephine WithersAndy Warhol by Jonathan Katzand many others.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

The major theme of Hockney's art, according to one essay in this catalogue of a traveling exhibit, is a "yawning sense of absence," an unfulfilled desire for connectedness. The transplanted Yorkshireman's pictures capture Southern California's pools, palms and play with deadpan seriousness. This album lets the reader decide whether Hockney's paintings, collages and prints are more than the febrile imaginings of a slick eclectic. His grid-like composite photographs attempt to convey "lived time"; in jaunty set designs and costumes for The Rake's Progress, The Magic Flute and Tristan und Isolde, he rummages through the vast terrain of art history. All the media in which Hockney has worked are amply represented here, yet overall his output has come to look monotonous and lightweight.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

British-born Hockney has had an international impact, and this book is a rich evocation of his 30-year career. Besides fellow artist R.B. Kitaj's overview, the book contains essays by Henry Geldzahler, Christopher Knight, Gert Schiff, Anne Hoy, Kenneth Silver, and Lawrence Weschler. This varied perspective is insightful, even startlingly intimateand in an unusual tribute to Hockney's stature as a painter, printmaker, and designer of contemporary angst, he is given the last 24 pages to make an artistic statement about the medium of creative work via commercial reproduction. This successful retrospective is recommended for all specialized art collections, particularly because of the evaluative essays, and is a fine acquisition for general libraries as well. Paula A. Baxter, NYPL
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500235147
• ISBN 13: 9780500235140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288