“Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960S” by David Hockney, 1984

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984

MIMI POSER Good evening. I’m Mimi Poser, and I’d like to welcome you all to the Guggenheim Museum, and this first in our series of lectures on the work of Pablo Picasso. It’s not often that we have the opportunity to hear about an artist’s work from three distinct vantage points. As you all know, tonight’s lecture will be given by artist David Hockney. The next lecture will be by author John Richardson, who is at work on a biography of Picasso. The third lecture will be given by Kim Levin, an art critic with The Village Voice. Now, since neither the subject nor the lecturer this evening needs very much introduction, I will, in the interest of keeping all of our time for David Hockney’s remarks, turn the podium over [00:01:00] to him without any further ado. Please help me in welcoming David Hockney. (applause)

DAVID HOCKNEY Well, this lecture, if that’s what it is, I did give it in Los Angeles about a year ago, I think. Before that, I was asked to give it there because I had been giving it privately to people if they came to visit me. It began my own discovery of what the pictures I’m going to show you was because of one painting that I [00:02:00] saw and enjoyed a great deal instantly, and I didn’t quite know why, but I kept going back to look at it. Eventually, I traded one and a half pictures of mine for it. Actually, mine were very big, and this is very small. I don’t really collect pictures. Postcards will do for me on the whole. Although the moment I had got it and kept looking at it all the time, I must admit it did have an effect. I’ve even counted the number of brush strokes in it, because — there’s 38, I think. Anyway, since I gave the lecture, I also made a lot of experiments myself about photography that, also, idea is actually from Picasso. I did give a lecture on photography as well, which was related [00:03:00] to Picasso. Now they seem to merge, myself. And I’m doing this without notes. I will read a little bit from a book.

There are 35 paintings, really, I wanted to talk about that I think, in a sense, are perhaps one work. They were done in 10 days, in the end of March in 1965. I think there’s a clear kind of narrative to the pictures. The themes they have, seem to me, work on many, many levels. Some simple. The subject matter, as it appears to be, is an artist and his model, or a man and a woman, but I think there’s other subject matter as well, [00:04:00] about depiction, about representation. I’ve also discovered — although I haven’t brought it this evening — I think there are more references than I thought in Picasso to photography. I keep finding them.

I’ll start with the first slide, because I think — which button do I press? This one. Because I think this is the first painting that I knew by Picasso that people attacked a bit, or did not like. Even as recently as three or four years ago, in a book about late Picasso, it’s very quickly and easily dismissed. But [00:05:00] when I saw it again in the show at the Museum of Modern Art, it dawned on me that there was something about it that was unusual. I think the art historian thought perhaps he’s quoting Goya, he’s interested in Goya, but there’s another aspect of the painting that I think can be overlooked, and I read it this way.

Painting, for a start, could only — it’s called Massacre in Korea, and it is about a massacre, clearly. But the one point, I think, that — it might be obvious, this, but I think it has to be made — is that a photograph could not depict this scene, because it’s very clear which side the artist is on. [00:06:00] If it was a photograph, it would also be clear which side the photographer was on.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984

He would be forced to be on the side of the soldiers, and therefore it would horrify us, because the identification with what was going on would be the opposite of what it is here. I think Picasso grasped this about documentary photography, that it was always too late, as it were. In documentary photography, we do not see the action of a massacre. We only see what’s happened afterwards, even as recently as the Beirut massacre. The photographs I have seen of it, or anybody have seen of it, show you what happened afterwards, not what happened at the time, because people who commit massacres do not generally like photographers, [00:07:00] or do not like people recording what they’re doing. I think he’s making a comment about photography here. It was painted in 1951, and after all, I think people had seen, in the late ’40s, they’d seen photographs of massacres of the Second World War, but again, they were after the event. They were not what was actually happening. I think he’s making the point — he uses illustrational techniques, naturally, to do this. So it seems ridiculous to criticize the illustrational techniques, because I think they were very, very necessary here.

Anyway, we’ll start with that, because I think one problem that seems to grow, [00:08:00] and it seems to grow with me, is that the photograph, since the invention of Cubism, which, after all, tried to destroy a single point of view, one way of seeing, has actually — Cubism has not triumphed in this sense. Photography seems to have triumphed. It’s more pervasive than ever. Most images we see are made this way. In a sense, the photograph is the last way of making a Renaissance picture. It’s not the beginning of anything. It’s the end of something. In the way photographs are made, it cannot actually go on that way. All it can do is have some interesting subject matter, and all we can do is see it for its subject matter, because it does not use any new way [00:09:00] of seeing. Of course, Picasso does have a new way of seeing, and deals with it right to the end. I think the point to be made as well is, of course, that no artist’s work is done until he drops dead. He goes on, and one shouldn’t particularly, I think, make too many judgments until it’s finished. With an artist the caliber of Picasso, common sense tells you that an artist of that quality does not spend the last 20 years of his life repeating himself. It’s against his nature, really. I don’t think it would be possible for him to do it, and it becomes clearer and clearer that the pictures of the ’60s and the early ’70s couldn’t have been painted any earlier. It could not have been done that way.

I know some people [00:10:00] did not care for the late pictures. I went to visit the show in Avignon in 1973. I went with Douglas Cooper, who is a wonderful Picasso scholar, really. I had been staying with him, and I suggested I wanted to — I said, “I want to go over and see it.” He assured me it was terrible, and it was all sad. We drove over, and all the way there, he kept telling me how terrible it was, and mumbling on and on. I just kept smiling. But when we got there, I insisted anyway on looking around carefully, and I suggested to Douglas he wasn’t old enough to see what it was about, anyway, in the end.

The [00:11:00] second picture is a photograph, which amused me because this is a photograph of the mother of Marie-Thérèse Walter. I got this from a Japanese catalog, and then found a painting Picasso had done of her, which is not in the Zervos catalogs. I must say the only way anybody can know the work of Picasso — I mean, any work, really — is through those catalogs. I’d purchased the last 10 of those catalogs a few years ago, since I’ve got the whole lot. It’s 35 volumes, and in a way, it’s an incredibly unique document, because, from a very early period, Picasso dated everything. It’s put in the catalog so [00:12:00] with this document you can — it’s

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 like a diary, of course. You can look up and find out what he was doing on Thursday afternoon of June 23, 1939 or something. You can actually find out. They listed if he did two or three paintings in the day. Listed in order, so you know one is done in the morning, and one in the afternoon or something. So you can actually figure out his time. In that sense, it’s an incredible, unique document, I think. No other human being has ever really put something together like this. I also assume he knew the work was being documented like this, so the last few years, where, after all, not that many were exhibited, I suppose he didn’t care, because [00:13:00] his discoveries were too great, and his urgency in dealing with them was too much, that he’d simply had to be getting on with it.

But it’s through that document that you can find out things that I made, as I say, what I think is — you can begin to see, for instance, that there are certain periods where the energy of the idea seems to really, really, generally, move quickly. They move quickly along. There’s other periods when it’s not quite as intense. But they’re hard to see, I think, really. I’m sorry all the slides I’ll be showing are black-and-white. It’s hard to see them until you somehow follow his mind. You can begin to do it. In that way, you can begin to [00:14:00] see beginnings and endings of things.

I will show you the next slide, which is the painting of her, because I think in the photograph, it was quite clear that she was a lady who wore glasses. Anyway, you can tell by the slight scowl in the eyes. She took them off for the photographer. But it didn’t matter whether she took them off for Picasso, because he’d seen them on, and once he’d seen them on, they were on. It wouldn’t matter. The photographer has to deal with exactly what is in front of him, which was the problem with the massacre pictures in photographs. Anyway, I think it’s a wonderful example, anyway, of how Cubism, in a sense, opens up portraiture. I think Picasso was the great portraitist [00:15:00] because of Cubism. It can make you see another way, and begin to deal with it.

Now, I think it also involves — it must involve — a question of a depiction of time, as Cubism must involve this, just as the photograph has a problem with this, a pictorial problem, I think. I think, actually, it’s time, in a sense, to attack photography as a very weak, poor method of making a picture. I think photography benefits from having a kind of official view. Whether people do believe it’s a depiction of objective reality or not, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t anymore. But nevertheless, that is an official [00:16:00] view about the photograph. Official cards need them. The British government would not allow me to make a self-portrait drawing to put in my passport. They insist on a photograph, which is giving it an official position, in a sense.

I think the question of time in depiction is extended — Cubism extends it, in a way, and Cubism, after all — he was groping — you have to grope your way to it. It’s not a theater that somebody thinks up. It’s groped for. I think Picasso never gives up Cubism. I think the last few years are the most refined form of it, that he can actually do it with one [00:17:00] brush stroke, or two brush strokes, make things have a clarity that is absolutely there. Of course, you have the addition of the brush stroke being visible on the surface.

But first, I’d like to read just a bit. It’s about Chinese painting, but I think it’s relevant here. And a little later, what he says also about Chinese painting, I think is very relevant to the pictures

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984

I will show you. I found this exhilarating, actually, when I read it. It’s the best condemnation of the photograph I’ve come across and read. “Chinese painting is an art of time, as well as of space. This was implied in the [00:18:00] arrangement of the group by movement from motif to motif through intervals. In the extended relationship of groups, movement in time became the most memorable characteristic of Chinese design. Historically, all early paintings, whether Egyptian, archaic Greek, or pre-Tang Chinese, lacked spatial unity, and had to be experienced as a sequence of pictorial motifs to be read by the spectator like so many pictographs. In such an ideational art, the principles of design were conditioned by the isolation of motifs, the movement of the eye through intervals, and the tying together of each motif to its adjacent motifs. These early principles were later transformed and enriched, until they reached their fulfillment in the supreme creation of Chinese genius, [00:19:00] the landscape scroll. A scroll painting must be experienced in time, like music or literature. Our attention is carried along laterally, from right to left, being restricted at any one moment to a short passage, which can be conveniently perused. This situation entirely alters the choice of design principles. The design as a whole will, like music, have a beginning, development, and ending. Many scrolls parallel the musical sequence of exposition, development, and recapitulation, and others have a definite climax, like a drama.

Specific themes will be needed, so that the spectator will be prepared by his memory for what is to come as the scroll unrolls, and will appreciate the various [00:20:00] treatments of the themes and the introduction of new material. In order to describe such an experience in time, we instinctively avoid the terms for spatial design, and resort to the terminology of music. We speak of themes and their expansion, contraction, and inversion; of melodic lines and their counterpoint; of the accelerandos and ritardandos of spacing; and even of crescendos and diminuendos as the landscapes become thick and profuse, or fade away into the nothingness of mist. The right timing of these qualities depends on lateral movement, rather than on movement in depth. The lines of movement are not mere leading lines, but linear melodies, which are the very substance of the scroll. [00:21:00] Although these principles of time are self-evident in the scroll, few Western observers have realized that these same temporal principles were used in the hanging paintings and the album pieces. No matter how few the motifs, or how simple the design, we must see it step by step if we are to apprehend all of its subtleties, because design, in time, did not arise from the shape of the format, but from a unique attitude towards space. In the European tradition, the interest in measurable space destroyed the continuous method of temporal sequence used in the Middle Ages, and led to the 15th-century invention of the fixed space of scientific perspective.

When the Chinese were faced with the same problem of spatial depth in the time period, they reworked [00:22:00] the early principles of time, and suggested a space through which one might wander, and a space which implied more space beyond the picture frame. We restricted space to a single vista, as though seen through an open door. They suggested the unlimited space of nature, as though they had stepped through that open door and had known the sudden, breathtaking experience of space extending in every direction and infinitely into the sky. Again, east and west look at nature through different glasses. One tries to explain and conquer nature through science, and the other wants to keep alive the eternal mystery which can only be suggested. Each seeks truth in its own way, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. The science of perspective achieved the illusion of depth and gave continuity and measurability

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984

[00:23:00] to the spatial unit. However, perspective put the experience of space into a straightjacket, in which it was seen from a single, fixed point of view, and was limited to a bounded quantity of space. This control of space might give measure to an interior figure scene, but it was certainly harmful to landscape painting.”

There’s a little bit more I’ll read later, the reference, but in a sense, it’s where Cubism — the Chinese, after all, didn’t need Cubism, because they had a more interesting way of seeing. But when he suggests it might give measure to an interior figure scene, I think we now come into Cubism anyway, and the interior figure scene, which is Picasso. But I think, within this, Picasso brings the ideas of a moving [00:24:00] focus to something that is closer to us. I think the moment things become closer to us, actually, our eyes move even more, which was what Cézanne seemed to discover. As things got closer and closer, they were harder to define. I think one great subject of Picasso, of course, is closeness. That’s my word. I know the kind of art jargon might call it the figure-ground relationship or something, but it actually means closeness. It means taking away distance. It means seeing it in a different way.

So now I’d like to begin now with these pictures that I will try and explain my narrative that I see here. As I say, unfortunately, they’re black-and-white. [00:25:00] It was suggested to me that, as I go through and talk about them, I should show them twice. They said it was better to see — you could see them better. So I might do that. But anyway, we’ll begin. Unfortunately, as I say, they’re all this black-and-white color, because I must point out as well, as far as I know, these pictures have never been exhibited together. They are probably now split up. It’s a shame they couldn’t be collected together, because I think they are, in a way, kind of one work made up of 35 canvases. If they were put together, there is, it seems, a very clear, marvelous story [00:26:00] that works on many, many levels, one of them being the difficulties of depiction.

So we begin with an artist who’s going to paint a woman. I think, in each of these 35 pictures, the painting of the woman, the invention of the way of seeing, is staggering, actually, because each time, it’s something different. The way he sees the figure is different. The way he makes it up — I think invention with the figure is unbelievably hard, because we believe — I think it’s very hard to escape what we believe a person actually looks like. [00:27:00] We think the photograph confirms this, but the photograph is about stillness. The photograph has no movement. The photograph’s surface cannot be examined, because it has the problem of being the same time in all the surface.

As your eye moves across it in time, in your life, it does not move across it in time in a photograph. It does, in any drawing or painting, because the hand made it. It dawned on me later that that was much more important than I thought, that the hand, the evidence of the hand at work, is necessary in depiction. There cannot be a mechanical depiction at all, actually. It’s not true enough. It does not tell us enough at all. It is a mere, mere, mere [00:28:00] glance. That is why we cannot look at a photograph very long. The best use, I think, for photography, is illustrated here. We are, after all, looking at a photograph, not a painting, but it’s a photograph of a painting, and of course it gets around the problem I’m talking about in a photograph because it’s a photograph of a flat surface.

So what we see is an artist with his model, a woman. He shows us her one way. Then the artist

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 is sitting down. What he sees and the way he paints the woman is completely different. The next one is completely different. I think it’s telling us that every time he sees and looks at the woman, of course you can see something [00:29:00] different. There are so many aspects, it seems here. She’s pretty, soft, feminine, and pretty — whatever. There’s so many things to see that it’s not — you have to find different ways to express it. The idea that there’s just one way to see, and the forms are always the same, seems to me, now, it’s naive, and as I say, the photograph keeps perpetuating this idea to us, because it cannot see any other way, unless it is broken up.

They’re also about the canvas, the empty canvas, the problem of depiction, the problem of representation. It’s why Picasso never goes to what we would call the abstract. He suggests there’s no such thing; it’s always a depiction of something. Again, the way what he puts down of the figure — it seems to me the invention [00:30:00] is staggering as he goes from one to — remember, these are done in a period of 10 days. I think on one day, seven of them are done. There are seven paintings made. I’ve forgotten exactly which day. I haven’t written it down here. I think this one is in the exhibition, so perhaps you can get an idea of what the color might be like in them.

I think, all the time, the inventions of the figures — it’s like [bark or mulch sod?]. It’s on an incredibly high level. It’s also referring back to previous ways he depicted things. I think, again, this is using memory, which Cubism itself inferred that memory is a [00:31:00] part of vision, it must be a part of vision, which I think discounts the idea that there is a kind of objective vision, because each person has a different memory of something. So each time, it seems to me, the figure is reinvented. He sees something else. Again, his memory, seems to me — he’s made a painting on the canvas to the left, and the painted girl on the right, almost, because of the way he’s painted it on the left, he makes it almost look as though it’s naturalistic. But although, to say that, I think I’m almost falling into the trap I’m criticizing. But as that’s what it looks like, I think it actually looks like the one on the left as well, the more we examine [00:32:00] our own way of looking. Sorry, am I going backwards? Sorry, I pressed the wrong button.

Each time, he seems to find another subject when he’s looking at the girl, although he’s not telling us he’s looking here, but naturally he is, because he’s making the depiction. Here, he makes a depiction of the space it’s in, which seems to me a wonderful invention.

Again, I’ve never seen the real paintings. I could only learn to read these because I’d seen one, and learned what he was doing with a brush. It must have been painted very quickly, I would think. And all painted from memory. [00:33:00]

I will explain, again from the Chinese idea, why they must be painted from memory. Here, the artist is beginning to appear again in the pictures. He’s telling you he’s going to begin painting, as the artist on the right, with his palette, and he’s going to begin to make a painting. He’s already made a painting in the picture. Again, the inventions are stunning. I think it’s a level that’s incredibly rare. I don’t think anybody else has done it. I don’t think anybody else has gotten near it at all. But there he is. He’s going to paint a girl on a flat surface. It’s a wonderfully witty way of representing [00:34:00] the flat surface, by turning it round, showing you a thin line. He does this again later. Emphasizing he is sitting — at least he has to sit against the canvas. He’s suggesting, also, of course the more traditional way of sitting still and

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 looking at a model. But then this, within it, has contradictions about this, because of course, the way it’s painted is not that way, and in dealing with memory, you see, of course, more. You begin to see the front, the back, the side of many things. You see different things, and it adds up to something richer.

He’s then going to begin paintings. He’s putting his mark down, and in the next one, he’s put some paint on the canvas. The way, even, he’s put the paint [00:35:00] on the canvas here, he’s squeezed — that’s simply a piece of white paint squeezed from the tube. But I noticed he’d also echoed the woman on the right, even the way he’d squeezed it, because he bends the paint over at the bottom, like her legs sitting, which isn’t quite easy to do. If you squeeze a tube of paint, how do you do that? You have to know exact — it’s not arbitrary. It’s not just squeezing it out like that. He’s figured it out, and he’s followed what is happening in the figure.

But then problems begin to occur, he’s suggesting. Oh, sorry, I keep pressing — sorry. I was pressing the right one. Wait a minute. But then problems begin to occur. He looks a bit [00:36:00] perplexed. He’s still looking at the girl. He’s going to put his brushes down for a bit, and he’s going to begin to look. The eye here is clearly — showing one eye is absolutely looking. Now, I know there’s many ways you can interpret this. Could be interpreted about his impotence, that there’s a sexual pleasure, voyeurism. It can be interpreted many ways. But after all, an artist is looking constantly. It’s also about an artist having to see, having to look. Going back, as it were, constantly, to nature. I think Picasso does that, which is why the art is open- ended. It’s why it doesn’t seem to get problems. It seems to go on getting richer and richer. And when he is looking, [00:37:00] again he’s pointing out, every time you look, there’s something different. Again, the figure is painted differently each time. Is always looking. The eye is always looking here. He’s still looking. Each time, he’s seeing different things. Here is a painting clearly about weight, about volume, in the way some are not. They’re about something else. There’s a thousand subjects. There’s a thousand ways of seeing. He’s still looking.

Here’s the girl connected with the sofa. There, she’s more connected with the sofa. How you would see the whole thing at times, for perhaps a second or two, and then something else. But [00:38:00] the way it’s seen, it’s suggesting that one must look, one must look, one must look, and the more one looks, the more variety there is. It’s staggering. He’s going on, always looking. She’s getting playful there with her arms. He’s still looking. He’s still inventing. Each time he’s looking, he’s inventing some new way to connect the seated girl, or the furniture, or whatever. Sometimes he ignores it. It’s all there. This little painting is upstairs.

Here, he’s stopped looking. The marvelous way, though, her arm becomes the sofa as well. This is the picture that I [00:39:00] counted, had about 39 — what I regarded as 39 brush marks. I must point out as well that in these pictures, in the late pictures, unlike the early pictures, there is far less covering up of the marks he makes. All the marks seem to be visible, which does link it, actually, with the Chinese way of painting, where they, too, would never cover up their marks.

Then it occurs to me that one of the reasons you might wish to cover up marks — a great deal of European painting, of course, did this — was to create, or wish to create, a feeling of solidity, a feeling of, of course, tangible space in some way. But in doing this, a solid, after all, only has a fixed shape if we are fixed, [00:40:00] if it is still, if the viewer is still, because in time, the

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 amount of space the body is taking up is bigger than the actual body itself. I think Picasso slowly abandoned that idea. It’s why, at first glance, I think, a lot of the late pictures look, to some people, as though they’re crude. They do not look that way to me. I think upstairs, there is nothing at all that is crude. I do not think they relate to what people call Neo-Expressionism, because I think they’re extremely refined painting, extremely refined, because they’re telling you, again, about his body making the picture, which at least gives you your body back a bit, in the way that one [00:41:00] point perspective, a way of seeing, takes it away. Frankly, in the end, in the photograph, it reduces you to an F-stop 16. It reduces you to one dot. You have no involvement. This is quite apart from cutting you off because of a window.

There’s another terrible effect is happening, and I think in these late paintings, he’s also breaking this down as well. He then begins to paint again. Naturally, you see him painting these very pictures that you’re seeing. As he begins to paint — there he is. He’s painting the very pictures we have just seen. He’s telling us about the problems of doing them. In doing this, here again, [00:42:00] he’s showing you about flatness, wittily put on its side, that he has to reduce the girl to one plane. He turns the plane so it just becomes a line. I think it’s amusing and witty way to do it. The hand on the paintbrush is so much about paint as well. It’s about it being put on. Stunning. He then tells us that of course what is necessary for all this is — a light touch is also necessary. But he also tells us that it’s a great struggle to do this. I think the contrast between those two paintings and what it’s telling you is stunning, that it was still a struggle. It is still hard. He makes the painting like a sculpture here, and we feel the struggle. You feel the struggle. [00:43:00] But again, it’s necessary to have a light touch, and he can deal with that as well.

That’s the group of paintings. I think that that narrative, about the struggle of depiction, about the struggle of representation, is very clear. They work on many, many levels. I think, one day, they should be put together. They might be intended to be one work. We do not know. The fact that they’re all individual, small canvases, I think Picasso simply got on with the next day’s work. He simply forgot about it and he has to do something else. The urgency of the discoveries, as I said, I think meant he simply had to work at an incredible pace. The fact that one day, one painting doesn’t work quite as good as another is neither here nor there [00:44:00] in this kind of work. It just doesn’t matter. I think that led us, or led some people, to believe, if they’d only seen 10 pictures, say, from a five-year period, to think, well, what’s he doing? I’ve seen it all before. But it’s no good looking at it that way. They have to be looked at another way. Should I show them again? Should we run through — if you start again. I think he also is helping us see how to look at a lot of the pictures, the late pictures, because watching the hand at work, which is very clear, if the brush stroke on what the brush is doing — it makes the surfaces, of course, of the paintings very exciting. You’re very aware of the surface, but you have to be aware of the surface, [00:45:00] because in a sense, that’s all we can see. The idea of one point perspective, anyway, the ridiculousness of it, of course, is that it’s taking the eye — it’s suggesting that the eye move the only way on a surface that it cannot move: into it. It cannot do that. It can only move laterally. It can move up and down, or left and right. In that sense, time must be read that way. Time will, of course, give us space, because they’re clearly related. I think this is the way you read them, the way we see them — or the way I see them, anyway. It gives many, many clues to [00:46:00] the way of seeing later pictures, that they have to be seen

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 in a special way that is a new way of seeing. I think it’s incredibly more interesting than, as I say, the pervasive photograph.

I’m attacking the photograph in a way because I think, as I say, it dominates us. Even, I might point out, television and the movies also. After all, the world is seen from one point. I might point out that there are obvious things happening. I can see them happening in an interesting way that other people, too, feel there’s something wrong. The last Fellini movie, And the Ship Sails On — I think [00:47:00] Fellini has begun to understand that all photography must be stylized anyway. It is not a way of seeing the world that is authentic, really. Fellini begins to get round it by making that battleship, the Austrian battleship, into a Cubist battleship. It’s a gigantic model that looks like a Cubist battleship on, all right, an artificial sea. But what it actually is, is you couldn’t say that it’s more real than a real battleship, but it’s more real than a photographed battleship. He could have photographed a real battleship differently to create the same effect. But in effect, what he was doing, if you’re building a Cubist battleship, [00:48:00] is already making a depiction of the battleship, i.e., it is seen. It has been seen by somebody. That is what all depictions must be. It is somebody seeing it. The idea that a machine can make it is, I think now, absurd. I know my own —

PART 2

DAVID HOCKNEY I think it’s very, very clear, there’s absolutely nothing — nothing — crude here at all. The drawing is staggering. I think it’s [only?] because the draftsmanship is stunning. I think it could only be done by an old man. Perhaps painting is an old man’s art. Because if he’s suggesting memory is part of vision, as we get older memory becomes more meaningful. We might forget things, but you’ve got to forget to remember anyway. It all seems part of what he’s saying.

As I said, I was [00:01:00] asked for a title for this lecture. I called it “Important Painting of the ’60s,” because these were done in the ’60s, and I think they’re unique. I don’t think anything else at all touched this area at all. Nothing got near it. Perhaps it was not possible. You needed a great old master to do it. We were just, perhaps, a bit slack looking at it. On the other hand, it was hard to see. They were not exhibited. They were not written about two weeks later, as many things were.

But I think, now, I’ll read you the last bit of Mr. George Rowley’s notes on moving focus, because [00:02:00] it seems to apply here as well, about memory. He suggests, “In the rendering of landscape, the use of one point perspective is even more damaging than in architectural [insinuation?] because it violates our experience of nature. Out of doors, our eyes are compelled to turn in every direction to encompass the scene. Reverse perspective, in which the lines converge in the eye of the spectator, instead of in the vanishing point, would have been much truer to psychological fact. This type of perspective has often been falsely imputed to Chinese landscape painting, even though the Chinese could never have been satisfied with any method of scientific representation, and always insisted upon artistic [00:03:00] presentation. They practiced the principle of the moving focus, by which the eye could wander while the spectator

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Picasso: Important Paintings of the 1960s” by David Hockney, 1984 also wandered in imagination through the landscape. By this device, one might travel through miles of landscape, might scale the mountain peaks, or descend into the depth of valleys. Might follow streams to their course or move with the waterfall in its plunge. How wonderfully our apprehension of nature has been expanded, combining in one picture the delights of many places seen in their more significant aspects. Such a design must be a memory picture, which the artist created after months of living with nature and absorbing the principles of growth until the elements of landscape were all in his heart. Then, and only then, [00:04:00] could he freely dash off hundreds of miles of river landscape in a single scroll, in which the design evolved in time, like a musical composition.”

It seems to me that’s what one is almost getting there, that the 10 days of that was memory — acknowledging memory is a part of vision. It means shapes change. There is no distortion in Picasso. It is not about distortion. Time makes the shapes change. I think the more you see it, the more you begin to realize it. It opens up, actually, a vast new world of depiction that is vivid to us. Again, the photograph is holding us back, because we [00:05:00] still believe that’s the way we see, but it is not the way we see. This is much closer to it, truer to it, and it is artistic presentation rather than scientific representation. I think, for an artist, for myself anyway, it opens up vast things. It’s completely open-ended and very thrilling.

I’d like to finish there. Thank you. (applause)

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Picasso: Paintings of the 1960's, introduction by Mimi Poser / David Hockney. 1984/4/3. Reel-to-Reel collection. A0004. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York