David Hockney Interview: I Am a Space Freak

the whole of landscape experience is really spatial it's a spatial experience we we like space I mean I do have a space freak really the Grand Canyon is the world's biggest hole in a way and when you go there you it's a thrill to stand at the edge and look into it you look down you always look down and there's also it's also not a perspective place there's no focus there's no center of focus you when you on the edge of the Grand Canyon you do this you're constantly doing this and looking around well we do that everywhere actually really everywhere but at the Grand Canyon everybody does that consciously because as I say there's no focal point there's no focus there's no building there's nothing so and I always thought it was unfiltered graphical and the grandeur of it very difficult to capture and so in 1982 and I began doing collages I didn't realize I'll go to the Grand Canyon and see what I can do with it and I went alone I drove out there it's about 10 hours drive from Los Angeles and I photographed it by it was difficult because I had only a camera without a motor you had to do around each time and I'd go along right now and then go down and I have to remember where the camera had been in my head and so keep it in your head and they took quite a long time to do an hour and more photographing that way and I'd piece it together right now about 1998 we printed one of these big for the Ludwig museum in Cologne and I thought he would work very good and then I found it didn't when we put it up you didn't see the space in it it was flat like wallpaper thing so the moment I saw that I thought you've got to paint this it has to be paint pigment and I painted one and went back to the Grand Canyon first again but I'd been been a few times since 1980 so I go a lot but I went back and then I did I did two paintings the first one was based on the elaborate photograph but the second one which is this one I decided not to base it on photographs at all and I would go I went to the Grand Canyon for a week stay there we I got we pulled a string or two and got a room in the old hotel right on the edge of the Grand Canyon so I could walk to the edge very from the room not very far mean you know a few yards actually and I spent a week there and I would I took a chair and I'd go and find lovely quiet spots for the chair there and sit for a long time sometimes just looking and at other times drawing and I thought I have always felt cameras push things away a bit and I always make things a little more distance than they are if you look through cameras often you feel that he looks further away than it is so I thought that's why it's called a closer Grand Canyon and then after about three days of just looking and moving about I then began drawing on it and then I did did quite a lot of drawings and then drove back to LA and began the painting straight away in the studio painting big pictures in fact making any large things it's - in literature - in music anything very large there are technical problems because they're large vast novel of vast Symphony there's there's technical problems because of the length and size and they have to be overcome and I knew this in the fall I know I was I found a way to do this to solve that problem so I still use small canvases to put it together because that was like the photographs in a way and I also knew doing this as well it made the painting easier to transport I will point that out I had done I think the painting of Mulholland Drive is I think this size but it's one canvas and it's in the County Museum in LA and they are reluctant to lend it now or even take it down a bit because it's one canvas is difficult to move when we did move it originally it didn't matter cuz I still own the painting then it was rolled up and sent to London but it's an acrylic that was acrylic but he can't do that allies not terrific thing to do so I partly did this because it's then it is easier to move about it's not that difficult would go in a Kate crate or something and they were painted and first shown at the Pompidou in Paris and in a big long room one was at one end and one was it the other but it was in a part of the Pompidou when they were redoing it this is 99 I think so 1999 and it was in rooms with quite low ceilings but I'd planned this show and when you came into the room I'd said to them when you look down one end you'll see one Grand Canyon and then here will be the other and as you walk well of course it never worked like that because there were always quite a few people in the room when their shows on and you couldn't raise them any higher so it didn't you know it was little I I thought I should have real mind you I couldn't do anything about if you if there's 50 people in the room you can't do much about him but they didn't work if there was no if no one in the room is terrific well I liked them you know sometimes I've thought two dimensions don't exist in nature today not really and it's our concept but I thought often it's all to do with the scale of us flatness because all you refer to flat canvas if I was that big the cameras would look like a mountain range it wouldn't need to do with our scale packs I mean I'm rather fascinated by flatness in a way in fact when it sometimes when I was sitting at the Grand Canyon I did sometimes you think is space and at other times it can be a whole flap thing that's it it's amazing if you're thinking about you know he's sitting there looking hard and you're thinking the eye is part of the mind is there and if you go there if sometimes you can have quite bad days meaning the camera sees it's full of the canyons full of mist and you can't see it and you stood there and it could be a feel or something so they have IMAX cinema there and so if you miss it there you can go in the IMAX cinema but the IMAX cinema is a screen that shape whereas of course it will be better that and but very big camera but it's only one camera therefore there's only one perspective in it and it doesn't get the ground yo the feeling I I didn't so I mean it's an opport I thought it was funny that people would drive off ok to this real Canon and just in cases misty you go and see it in a film which you could have seen back in Chicago London anywhere and people had painted the Grand Canyon you know to go back to it I mean Thomas Moran and then they're not bad but they're not they don't do it justice now I'm not sure I do either but I tend to think the whole of landscape experience is really spatial it's a spatial experience we we like space I mean I do have enough space freak really actually my sister once said to me she thought space was god I thought I was rather poetic in the way I have thought of doing I know I did think I was very turned on again and I thought you know if I could if I rented a studio in Williams or Flagstaff maybe I could paint almost on the spot big pictures we couldn't there but I did think of that and then I and I thought I was a possibility I said - Gregory look into it and then we went up to you cemetery and I did quite a lot of drawings in you 70 on the iPad but I never thought we'd make that dear little lane in East Yorkshire Wolds gate as interesting as the Grand Canyon which is done doing now and we've done it I'm doing it in drawings paintings and using nine cameras and it's making it a spectacle as good as the Grand Canyon but most people if they drove down the lane wouldn't think anything much of it at all if you use nine cameras how do you compose the picture well you draw for instance if you we were using three rows of three and if you they're small now when it opens the high definition counts but if you just leave the camera open and put nine cameras there and on your monitors you'll have nine same pictures you've then got to focus in and you've got to then make a you have to draw the picture you don't want things appearing twice how does a tree if you're going past it will move from one camera to the other so the cameras are pointing in different directions and so when you look at them you have forced to scan them like that you see and 3d is quite old you know it was they thought of it a long long time is always two cameras like two eyes but it does make an illusion of space but it isn't how we see space we see space through time I see the tip of your crew I see your knee I see this different times and somehow you make space in your head and they so three days I went to see avatar did you say here's my criticism of avatar I admit I couldn't hear I didn't expect to hear the dialogue but I went to see it visually and but I got a bit tired of me quickly you never saw a really big space but say when you're on the planet I wanted to see what does a leaf look like what does the bark of the tree look like you never saw it partly because the cameras are moving too quickly but I will point out this if it was real 3d real 3d I can do this I can look all around but you can't there they're always telling you where to look partly because they're moving the cameras too quickly I can't stand it anymore I think it's a visual borer now this is MTV actually constant constant moving cut they're always telling you where to look our nine cameras are not but you have to scan them you're forced to scan them because there's nine vanishing point a minimum of nine vanishing points nine perspectives and so you are constantly scanning once you're doing that in your head you're making a space out of it I think there well nine cameras 90 is about three times better than 3d you

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 247,253

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, David Hockney, landscape, spatial experience, Grand Canyon

Id: rnDAidgLZiE

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2016