A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney - Softcover

Gayford, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500292256 ISBN 13: 9780500292259

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2016

Synopsis

“Sumptuously illustrated, this radiant volume encapsulates what it truly means to be a visual artist.” ―Booklist

David Hockney’s exuberant work is highly praised and widely celebrated―he is perhaps the world’s most popular living painter. But he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art.

This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney’s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney’s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition’s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist’s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comédie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio.

The conversations between Hockney and Gayford are punctuated by surprising and revealing observations on other artists―Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso among them―and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of Yorkshire, Hockney’s birthplace, and California. 181 illustrations, 154 in color

About this title

About the Author:

Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf, A Bigger Message, and Rendez-vouz with Art (with Philippe de Montebello), and Modernists and Mavericks.

Review:

“[A Bigger Message] has an energy and vividness that can only be called cinematic”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“Five new chapters have been added to this volume, originally published in 2011. ‘The world’s most popular living painter’ discusses his life and art with art critic Martin Gayford.”
- Library Journal

“A substantially expanded edition of Gayford’s intriguing hybrid Q&A, art criticism and memoir. A Bigger Message enriches our own understanding not only of England’s most famous living painter but of the bigger picture, as well.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0500292256
• ISBN 13: 9780500292259
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296