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Hockney

Films

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

14/03/2015

BBC Four - Hockney

A unique portrait of David Hockney, one of the most significant artists of his generation.

Documentary about artist David Hockney, from his early life in working-class Bradford to his relocation to Hollywood, with access to his personal archive of photographs and film.

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. Hockney offers theories about art, the universe and everything. But as he reveals, it's the hidden self-interrogation that gives his famously optimistic pictures their unexpected edge and attack. 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.

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