BBC Documentaries

Hockney (2015x67)

: 14, 2015

Hockney is the definitive exploration of one of the most significant artists of his generation. For the first time, David Hockney has given access to his personal archive of photographs and film, resulting in an unparalleled visual diary of a long life. '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 - after all, everybody does look.' His is a long-term one-man campaign against the pessimism of the world, mastering new media - whether acrylic paint or iPad digits - in the search for a picture adequate to his sense of what it is to be alive. The film chronicles Hockney's vast career, from his early life in working-class Bradford, where his love for pictures was developed through his admiration for cinema, to his relocation to Hollywood, where his life-long struggle to escape labels ('queer', 'working class', figurative artist') was fully realised. David Hockney offers theories about art, the universe and everything. But as Hockney reveals, it's the hidden self-interrogation that gives his famously optimistic pictures their unexpected edge and attack. As one of his oldest friends says of his early work, 'the pictures are not just about men fucking'. The subject matter is a way into the picture to see something else, to open our eyes and our minds. Acclaimed film-maker Randall Wright offers a unique view of this unconventional artist who is now reaching new peaks of popularity worldwide, remains as charismatic as ever and at seventy seven is still working in the studio seven days a week.