Köln, Germany: Taschen (2022)

Hardback.

248 pages
14.8 in H | 11.4 in W
6 lb Wt

New in dust jacket.

Previously available in an exclusive signed edition, this artist’s book by David Hockney now sees an unlimited XL-format release. In 120 iPhone and iPad drawings, the artist records his perceptions of the world from the window of his Yorkshire home. Each image depicts a fleeting moment—together they paint the passage of time through Hockney’s eyes.

When David Hockney discovered the iPhone as an artistic medium, it opened up entirely new possibilities for his art. He made his first digital drawings in spring 2009, describing the morning landscape in broad lines and dazzling colors directly on a display that offered subtle hues as unmixed expressions of pure light. Then in 2010, Hockney started working with an iPad, and the larger screen expanded his artistic repertoire and enabled an even more complex interplay of color, light, and line.

Each image in this book captures a fleeting moment seen through a window in Hockney’s Yorkshire home: from vibrant sunrise and lilac morning sky to peaceful night-time impressions or the sudden arrival of spring. Fascinating details reveal drops on window panes, distant lights in the night, reflections on vases or an abundance of varied window-sill vegetation. In 120 drawings made between 2009 and 2012, selected and arranged by the artist himself, we experience the passage of time through the eyes of David Hockney.

This artist’s book, which first appeared in an exclusive signed edition, now returns as an unlimited run, whose still generous XL format presents Hockney’s impressions in brilliant resolution. So now is the perfect occasion to heed the advice of the Times critic regarding this book: “If you would like to be given a bouquet by David Hockney, here is your chance.”

David Hockney (born July 9, 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He first emerged in the early 1960s during the height of British pop, then moved to Los Angeles in 1964, where he famously painted a series of swimming pool pictures. Alongside the classic genres of portraiture and landscape, he always kept evolving his art, using technologies such as Polaroids, photocopiers and fax machines, digital video, or the iPhone and iPad as tools for his painting. Since his first big survey exhibition, which in 1970 traveled Europe from the Whitechapel Gallery in London, he has been one of the most widely shown and popular artists of our time.