Art Quotes by David Hockney

There's no need to believe what an artist says. Believe what he does; that's what counts.

— David Hockney

I've always been a looker. Loads of people say, "I never saw that" - but that's what artists do.

— David Hockney

Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.

— David Hockney

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

— David Hockney

I've never been interested in, much in the politics of the art world, it doesn't interest me.

— David Hockney

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

— David Hockney

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art.

— David Hockney

I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old.

— David Hockney

Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not…

— David Hockney

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But…

— David Hockney

We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music.

— David Hockney

What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that,…

— David Hockney

In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools.…

— David Hockney

Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face.

— David Hockney

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you…

— David Hockney

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with…

— David Hockney

No theoretician, no writer on art, however interesting he or she might be, could be as interesting as Picasso. A good writer…

— David Hockney

“Artists, real artists, have to work. They can’t be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous…

— David Hockney

...all along I've had an ambivalent relationship to photography - but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a…

— David Hockney

Dawn is about luminosity and so is the iPhone... The little drawings of the dawn are done while I'm still in bed...…

— David Hockney

It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other…

— David Hockney

The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when…

— David Hockney

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I…

— David Hockney

What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they…

— David Hockney

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

— David Hockney

All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

— David Hockney

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

— David Hockney

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art.

— David Hockney

I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries.

— David Hockney

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way

— David Hockney

I think my father would have liked to have been an artist, actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the…

— David Hockney

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

— David Hockney

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work…

— David Hockney

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

— David Hockney

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total…

— David Hockney

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to…

— David Hockney

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it…

— David Hockney

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.

— David Hockney

Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't have been…

— David Hockney

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing.…

— David Hockney