David Hockney: Paper Trails

British artist David Hockney is renowned for his distinctive paintings, mostly portraiture and landscape, but also for his approach to works on paper and printmaking, which mirrors the vibrancy and diligent indexing seen in his broader body of work. Hockney’s prints often showcase a dynamic interplay of color, form and perspective, reflecting his keen eye for visual storytelling of intimate elements of his own life. Throughout his career he has experimented with various printmaking techniques, including etching, lithography, screenprinting and more recently iPads, each method revealing his diligence in manipulating the medium—without ever experiencing, in his own words, “a feeling of failure.” Like much of his oeuvre, Hockney’s prints draw from extensive art historical study of the optical devices of Old Master paintings.

 This volume gathers Hockey’s prints and other works on paper from his over six decades of output. His visual experiments, always surprising in their outcomes, suggest a rich interior and exterior life, captured in telling bits and fragments, suggesting a montage of quotidian scenes. The title, Paper Trails, echoes Peter Bürger’s writings on visual art’s relationship with the “praxis of life.”

 David Hockney (born 1937) is one of the most celebrated British contemporary artists. Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art with R.B. Kitaj, Allen Jones and Derek Boshier. Graduating with a gold medal, he became a leading figure in Pop art. His work encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and stage design.