0:00:13 > 0:00:14'A winter's morning.
0:00:14 > 0:00:18'Bridlington, on the Yorkshire coast.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23'I'm waiting like a grumpy fisherman
0:00:23 > 0:00:27'to catch something mundane, but miraculous... The sunrise.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38'Down the other end of the beach is another man who isn't asleep.
0:00:38 > 0:00:43'He'll be peering through his bedroom window, already at work, because he always is.'
0:00:44 > 0:00:48I might be anywhere in the world, doing anything, waiting to do some filming
0:00:48 > 0:00:54and there's little ping and, in the inbox of my phone or my iPad,
0:00:54 > 0:00:59there is a present. And the present might be some freshly-cut flowers,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02a bottle of wine on a table,
0:01:02 > 0:01:06it might be the sun coming up over the sea,
0:01:06 > 0:01:09it might be a misty mountain in California.
0:01:09 > 0:01:14In each case, it's a glowing little drawing, by David Hockney.
0:01:16 > 0:01:21'I've been drawing all my life and, recently, after Hockney's tip-off,
0:01:21 > 0:01:24'mostly on an electronic tablet.'
0:01:25 > 0:01:26One of the things that Hockney gives you is,
0:01:27 > 0:01:30there's absolutely no way in a normal day that you'd get up
0:01:30 > 0:01:34at sort of 7:30 in the morning and just go and stand
0:01:34 > 0:01:37and stare at a completely cloudy
0:01:37 > 0:01:42and, initially, colourless sea and just watch the sun come up.
0:01:42 > 0:01:45And it's absolutely fantastic. It's wonderful.
0:01:45 > 0:01:47It's just about looking, you know?
0:01:47 > 0:01:49The harder you look, the more you see, and the more you get back.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59# Well, I insist that everybody twists!
0:01:59 > 0:02:02# Come on, everybody let's twist Hey, hey!
0:02:02 > 0:02:05# Come on, everybody, let's twist Well-ah, well-ah, well-ah!
0:02:05 > 0:02:07# Everybody, everybody Everybody, everybody's
0:02:07 > 0:02:09# Doin' the twist, yeah! #
0:02:09 > 0:02:14When art went pop in the '60s, David Hockney was there...
0:02:14 > 0:02:16if not actually doing the twist.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19# Twist around the clock! Around the clock. #
0:02:19 > 0:02:24'Now, he has been voted Britain's Most Influential Living Painter
0:02:24 > 0:02:28'and he seems to have attained the status of "national treasure".'
0:02:28 > 0:02:30SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE
0:02:30 > 0:02:32You've got it, yeah.
0:02:35 > 0:02:40Thought Hockney was born in Bradford, he's been best known for escaping to California and painting
0:02:40 > 0:02:45- the swimming pool paradise he found there.- Marvellous shadow.
0:02:45 > 0:02:50In the '60s and '70s, he was the golden boy of a hedonistic art world
0:02:50 > 0:02:56in LA and London. He was openly gay and massively successful.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00But he never stood still. His work embraced stage design,
0:03:00 > 0:03:05portraits, photo-collages, prints and even faxes.
0:03:12 > 0:03:16Even so, the work which is now being hung in London isn't something
0:03:16 > 0:03:18anybody predicted.
0:03:20 > 0:03:25He's been painting landscapes of his native East Yorkshire,
0:03:25 > 0:03:29a genre that is out of fashion for a place whose quiet beauty
0:03:29 > 0:03:32seems to have almost escaped notice.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37Not any more, though, because these places, in vivid colour
0:03:37 > 0:03:41and heroic scale, on canvas and in multi-screen films,
0:03:41 > 0:03:46have taken over all 13 galleries of the Royal Academy -
0:03:46 > 0:03:52an unprecedented honour and spectacular climax to Hockney's career.
0:03:52 > 0:03:54I went to Bridlington to interview him for the radio...
0:03:54 > 0:03:58This was...Sunrise.
0:03:58 > 0:04:02and I was reminded how fascinated he is by new ways of picture making.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07In a way, you can't destroy the drawings, either,
0:04:07 > 0:04:10because it's not a real surface.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13I also got more than just a fine sunrise.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16Textures. Marvellous textures.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20A sneak preview of the films he is now making, which seem to prove
0:04:20 > 0:04:24his passionate attachment to this very English landscape.
0:04:24 > 0:04:26First, I wanted to talk about the paintings,
0:04:26 > 0:04:31which show that Hockney has returned to England and made a part of it very much his own.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Hockney has come home.
0:04:33 > 0:04:34This is a picture
0:04:34 > 0:04:38of England, of a particular part of England, obviously.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42Most of these paintings are of East Yorkshire and Bridlington,
0:04:42 > 0:04:47where you've been for seven years now, painting. But you seem to me to be making
0:04:47 > 0:04:51statements about what matters to you about England.
0:04:51 > 0:04:55This is not part of the heavily signed,
0:04:55 > 0:05:01over developed England of the South.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05Well, remember I've lived out of England for 30 years,
0:05:05 > 0:05:06but I've always been coming here,
0:05:06 > 0:05:08because my mother lived here.
0:05:08 > 0:05:14Erm, I spent 30 Christmases in Bridlington.
0:05:14 > 0:05:16So I was always coming in.
0:05:16 > 0:05:18And in the winter, I never stayed long,
0:05:18 > 0:05:21because I always thought it was too dark and too cold.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24Not enough light.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27But it was only when I thought I'd found a subject
0:05:27 > 0:05:30that I then decided, "Well, I'll stay a bit longer."
0:05:33 > 0:05:36That subject was the surrounding countryside of the Yorkshire Wolds.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47Just let me ask you a little bit, about the landscape, David,
0:05:47 > 0:05:52because this is a landscape you've known, one way or another, all your life,
0:05:52 > 0:05:58but it's only in the last six, seven years that you've really lived in it full time.
0:05:59 > 0:06:04Um, yeah, I mean, I've known it since early teens, actually.
0:06:04 > 0:06:12I worked on a farm not that far away. I cycled round here for two summers,
0:06:12 > 0:06:16But you get to know it, and you know it's hilly if you're cycling.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19- You feel it, yes.- You do.
0:06:19 > 0:06:23But I was always attracted to it. I always thought it had a space
0:06:23 > 0:06:26that was, I thought, attractive.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53Local place names, like Thixendale, Woldgate
0:06:53 > 0:06:58and Bugthorpe have come to dominate the walls of the Royal Academy.
0:06:58 > 0:07:00It's all been carefully planned,
0:07:00 > 0:07:03by Hockney, the expert set designer,
0:07:03 > 0:07:06who's built a model of the entire show,
0:07:06 > 0:07:08back in his studio in Bridlington.
0:07:08 > 0:07:11Can you give us a little tour of the exhibition?
0:07:11 > 0:07:15Well, erm, you, kind of, come in here and there's four paintings -
0:07:15 > 0:07:18Three Trees Near Thixendale,
0:07:18 > 0:07:23in the spring, summer, autumn and winter.
0:07:23 > 0:07:30And you then turn here. Here's the only room with old work.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34I kept telling them, "Not so many old pictures, let's have new".
0:07:34 > 0:07:37I mean, it's not a retrospective exhibition.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41I mean, mostly it's very new work.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45And I knew perfectly well they wouldn't give many artists that
0:07:45 > 0:07:49opportunity when they don't know what the new work is going to be like,
0:07:49 > 0:07:51but I think we rose to the occasion.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55'The scale of the work is striking.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59'He's not just painting Yorkshire, he's painting it big.'
0:07:59 > 0:08:05It's called A Bigger Picture, which I'm well aware means a few things.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09That people need a bigger picture, so they can see things, don't they?
0:08:10 > 0:08:13A bigger perspective, a wider perspective?
0:08:13 > 0:08:14A wider perspective...
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Let's be... You must also be conscious that,
0:08:17 > 0:08:20by doing something like this in the Royal Academy,
0:08:20 > 0:08:26you are putting yourself up against the greatest English landscape painters ever,
0:08:26 > 0:08:28who have done the same sort of thing.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31These are the rooms in which the Constables and the Turners hung.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34They were never offered all this room, on their own.
0:08:34 > 0:08:41- So you're... This is a conscious... - Yeah, I'll take them on, OK.
0:08:43 > 0:08:46If it was that kind of competition,
0:08:46 > 0:08:47Hockney's already ahead of the game.
0:08:47 > 0:08:52Constable struggled all his life to gain recognition for his landscapes
0:08:52 > 0:08:55and it took him years to be elected to the Royal Academy.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01One of the last works to be unpacked is the poster image
0:09:01 > 0:09:05of the entire Bigger Picture show.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14The strikingly-coloured Winter Timber arrives,
0:09:14 > 0:09:18as 15 separate canvases.
0:09:20 > 0:09:25- These are the best rooms in London for paintings.- They're wonderful.
0:09:25 > 0:09:27They're just going to put this up.
0:09:29 > 0:09:32So, David they're going to... They're just working out the height.
0:09:32 > 0:09:37Then they'll hold up the bottom two canvases and we can look and see if the balance works.
0:09:37 > 0:09:39And we can go down there and look, yeah.
0:09:39 > 0:09:43I was looking at the, you know, the component canvases,
0:09:43 > 0:09:47- and it's remarkable how many of them work separately as pictures.- Yeah.
0:09:47 > 0:09:48- Just by themselves.- Yeah.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51- There's a wonderful piece of, almost, abstract painting.- Yeah.
0:09:51 > 0:09:56I mean, well, everything is abstract, in a way, I mean, on a flat surface.
0:09:56 > 0:10:01- Yes. These. These work beautifully, don't they?- Yeah.
0:10:02 > 0:10:07When they said the landscape genre's finished, you can't do anything.
0:10:07 > 0:10:10It can't be true of nature and the landscape, it's only our way
0:10:10 > 0:10:13of looking at it that's finished, that's boring or something.
0:10:13 > 0:10:15So, get a new way.
0:10:15 > 0:10:20Well, we did with cameras, we did it here, with making them bigger.
0:10:20 > 0:10:25You can work bigger outside. I can do that, I like doing that.
0:10:25 > 0:10:29I mean, not every artist wants to do that. Some do that.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33Erm, I've always liked that.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36You know, the thing about the big pictures,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39the problems are mainly because they're big.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45You know, in Brid, we have a wall where we just clip them on,
0:10:45 > 0:10:47so you can move them about.
0:10:47 > 0:10:51And it's a technical problem solved for painting very, very
0:10:51 > 0:10:53big paintings.
0:10:53 > 0:10:56And, uh, somehow, I think, painting should be bigger.
0:10:56 > 0:11:02Scale, I mean, that's what I'm saying here, scale is important.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05You begin to... You're aware, more aware, you're looking.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08- You're inside something, rather than just standing away from it?- Outside.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12The European idea and the Chinese idea were different.
0:11:12 > 0:11:18The Chinese idea of the landscape was you walking through it,
0:11:18 > 0:11:20the scroll was you moved through it.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24The European idea was a window.
0:11:24 > 0:11:29You are fixed point, which is what the camera is, isn't it?
0:11:36 > 0:11:39You are inhabiting some of the grandest,
0:11:39 > 0:11:43biggest rooms - all of the rooms - of the Royal Academy,
0:11:43 > 0:11:46which is a very rare thing for any living artist to do.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50It's unusual for somebody to take up the whole Academy.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54Mind you, I did find a great quote. I was in San Francisco recently,
0:11:54 > 0:11:59they had a terrific Picasso show, on loan from Paris.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03And there was a quote in it, "Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
0:12:03 > 0:12:08I loved it and thought, "Well, give me the Royal Academy and I'll fill it."
0:12:08 > 0:12:13THEY CHAT
0:12:13 > 0:12:19'He's become increasingly prolific over the past 10-15 years,
0:12:19 > 0:12:22'and that's partly to do with getting older and knowing'
0:12:22 > 0:12:27the work that he still wants to make and having that sense of urgency.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30But they're not just knocked off.
0:12:30 > 0:12:37I mean, he is working seven days a week, from first light until dusk.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40He wakes up at 4:30 in the morning, or 5:30 in the morning,
0:12:40 > 0:12:44and he'll see the light coming through the window and a vase
0:12:44 > 0:12:48of flowers there and he'll take out his iPad and he'll be making
0:12:48 > 0:12:51a picture, which he'll send to his friends an hour later.
0:12:51 > 0:12:57He's always had that work ethic and that sense of urgency about making art.
0:12:57 > 0:13:01So, it's also a question of a lifetime of experience.
0:13:01 > 0:13:06The way he can paint now, the skill and the confidence he has,
0:13:06 > 0:13:09he wouldn't have had, even in 1970.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13He used to spend six months on some paintings, just on making
0:13:13 > 0:13:17one painting, and he wouldn't have had the fluency then that he has now.
0:13:17 > 0:13:24He's fond of saying that the Chinese say that painting is an old man's art and it's certainly borne out
0:13:24 > 0:13:30in his case, that a lifetime's experience enables him to work in the way that he does now.
0:13:30 > 0:13:36Growing up in Bradford, his father a conscientious objector, his mother a Methodist,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39Hockney won his first art prize at grammar school,
0:13:39 > 0:13:41went to the Royal College of Art
0:13:41 > 0:13:44and fled the industrial North.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48He was charismatic and image conscious. His career was glittering.
0:13:48 > 0:13:53But he never chose the route of conceptual art, never stopped drawing,
0:13:53 > 0:13:57and was always serious about the practicalities of picture making.
0:13:57 > 0:14:01What do you think when you come back and look again at your earliest?
0:14:01 > 0:14:03Do you know what I thought straight away?
0:14:03 > 0:14:07These are the only paintings that have gone a bit dark.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11- And it's because of the cheap white paint that I was using.- Really?
0:14:11 > 0:14:18It's a cheap flake-white. If you put too much in the paint, it makes it go dark not that long after.
0:14:18 > 0:14:24And I was only 18 when I was doing it, so nobody cared.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27You just covered them up, mostly.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30- But the mountain one, I used better paint.- Yes.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32- So this is better. - No, this is still...
0:14:32 > 0:14:36I'm at the Royal College of Art. Still a student, actually.
0:14:36 > 0:14:38Still a student. And this is...
0:14:38 > 0:14:42You were talking about Chinese painting and the journey.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45- Yeah.- It seems to be me this is a little bit of a journey.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50Well, it was only my... I think, second or third trip on the continent
0:14:50 > 0:14:53and I was going to Italy
0:14:53 > 0:15:00and me and an American friend were given a lift from London to Berne in a little minivan
0:15:00 > 0:15:03with no windows in it. I was in the back, so you never saw anything,
0:15:03 > 0:15:07and we went through Switzerland and never really saw it.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11At which I thought, "It's disappointing, so you can't paint the mountains."
0:15:11 > 0:15:14So I thought, "There's another way you can paint them."
0:15:14 > 0:15:18This is from the postcard of the mountains
0:15:18 > 0:15:20and it's a geology diagram.
0:15:20 > 0:15:23Yes, it is a journey, moving through it.
0:15:23 > 0:15:26I mean, er...
0:15:26 > 0:15:29- I might be probably a bit obsessed with it, yeah.- The journey?
0:15:29 > 0:15:35Well, or... But it's the... As I say, it's the movement.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39It's movement through... YOUR movement. It's like...
0:15:39 > 0:15:42Again, I'll point out the difference.
0:15:42 > 0:15:50Duchamp did a woman descending a staircase. It's about HER movement there.
0:15:50 > 0:15:52But that's not what Picasso did.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55In his still lifes, it's about YOUR movement,
0:15:55 > 0:15:57just moving the head and so on,
0:15:57 > 0:16:01- which is a lot more interesting, I think.- Yeah.- A great deal more interesting.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07And that hasn't been explored that much.
0:16:07 > 0:16:11Probably because of the camera, the ubiquity of the camera and that image,
0:16:11 > 0:16:18and it's also unfortunately named - Cubism. It wasn't about cubes.
0:16:18 > 0:16:22- It's about space in between them. - Yeah, and about depicting space and us in it.
0:16:22 > 0:16:28And I point out... Really the most interesting space of all isn't way out there,
0:16:28 > 0:16:31it's where I end and where you begin, isn't it?
0:16:32 > 0:16:34CAMERA CLICKS AND WINDS
0:16:34 > 0:16:38Do you know, I'm just a snapper, really.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41You know, I've taken photographs for a long, long time
0:16:41 > 0:16:45and I have about 100 albums full of photographs, all a life.
0:16:45 > 0:16:50Hockney's relationship with photography has actually been long and complicated.
0:16:50 > 0:16:52In the mid-Eighties, he took to using photographs
0:16:52 > 0:16:57to dramatise the sense of space in a landscape.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00Pearblossom Highway is a collage of prints
0:17:00 > 0:17:03designed to mimic the subjective,
0:17:03 > 0:17:08immersive - you might even say, Cubist - experience of space.
0:17:09 > 0:17:14A Closer Grand Canyon is a different solution to the same problem,
0:17:14 > 0:17:17painted on 60 glowing canvases.
0:17:17 > 0:17:20It's a spatial thrill, the Grand Canyon, seems to me.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23Very, very big special thrill.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26It's unusual, there's no focal point.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30If you stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon you have to look everywhere.
0:17:30 > 0:17:35Some things are a bit un-photographable, especially if it's space.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39At the time, this was the biggest picture you'd done, was it, I think?
0:17:39 > 0:17:41Er...yes, it would've been, yeah.
0:17:41 > 0:17:45Yeah, so this is maybe the beginning of the bigger and bigger pictures. That's pretty big.
0:17:45 > 0:17:51- Actually, no, THAT'S the same size and that's ten years earlier.- OK.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55And I was doing... I'd just got a different studio in LA.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58The moment I get bigger studios, I start doing everything bigger.
0:18:06 > 0:18:07I'll sign the picture.
0:18:09 > 0:18:14'I've often said that people never quite know how to place my art
0:18:14 > 0:18:18'but it's their worry, not mine!
0:18:18 > 0:18:22'You learn the lesson from Picasso. You shouldn't be afraid.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25'I loved it the other day when somebody came in, looked at that
0:18:25 > 0:18:28'and said, "You wouldn't know it was painted by David Hockney."
0:18:28 > 0:18:32'I said, no. I thought that was exciting. You will one day.'
0:18:32 > 0:18:35In Los Angeles, his experience
0:18:35 > 0:18:38of driving through the Hollywood Hills and the canyons
0:18:38 > 0:18:43inspired a new kind of landscape - road paintings.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47I decided I'd paint a picture of the Nichols Canyon.
0:18:49 > 0:18:54The first thing I drew was this line. It went all over the place at first.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57With driving up and down in a little open car,
0:18:57 > 0:19:02you sensed how it was big, how it was above you. How things...
0:19:02 > 0:19:05You were small and it zoomed up on either side.
0:19:12 > 0:19:14The moment I got here,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18within one week of coming here - I'd never driven before -
0:19:18 > 0:19:20I'd got a driving licence, bought a car,
0:19:20 > 0:19:24got a studio and I thought, this is the place.
0:19:24 > 0:19:27And I thought, it's so sexy, all these incredible boys.
0:19:27 > 0:19:29Everybody wore little white socks, then.
0:19:29 > 0:19:34It's always sunny. It's got all the energy of the United States
0:19:34 > 0:19:37with the Mediterranean thrown in,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40which I think is a wonderful combination.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45It even looks a bit like Italy.
0:19:45 > 0:19:47- Do you go to America?- Yes, a bit.
0:19:47 > 0:19:50OK, this is my observation in America.
0:19:52 > 0:19:59- They're all medicated now and they're are bit slower.- They're on pills?
0:19:59 > 0:20:01Yeah, and you can tell.
0:20:01 > 0:20:08- That snapped finger... - Has gone a bit.- ..has gone a bit
0:20:08 > 0:20:12and I mentioned it. When I mentioned it to Gregory in LA,
0:20:12 > 0:20:19he came up with a very marvellous LA observation and he said,
0:20:19 > 0:20:23"Yes, they're slower away at the traffic lights."
0:20:24 > 0:20:28In 1997, Hockney spent six months in Yorkshire,
0:20:28 > 0:20:32in order to be near his close friend and supporter, Jonathan Silver,
0:20:32 > 0:20:36who was terminally ill. In the late 1980s,
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Silver had purchased Salts Mill in Saltaire near Bradford,
0:20:40 > 0:20:44where he created a gallery for Hockney's work.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46It was Silver who'd been at the receiving end
0:20:46 > 0:20:49of Hockney's first epic work for fax machine.
0:20:49 > 0:20:51We thought we had one or two problems.
0:20:51 > 0:20:56At the beginning, when it started off, we didn't get a connection, but at the moment...
0:20:56 > 0:20:57it's magicking the place, isn't it?
0:20:57 > 0:21:03He also suggested Hockney should paint his native Yorkshire.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06This is an unusual painting, because it's of buildings
0:21:06 > 0:21:08and it's for your friend, who was ill.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12- It's not a subject I would normally have done.- Yeah.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16Architecture is not a subject I'm that interested in.
0:21:16 > 0:21:21I painted that in LA, when I went back, but because Jonathan was dying,
0:21:21 > 0:21:26- I thought, "Well, I'll paint Saltaire for him."- Yeah.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30And, as I say, it wasn't a subject normally I'd deal with, but I did
0:21:30 > 0:21:32and he was very pleased.
0:21:32 > 0:21:36- And the painting I was really doing, or wanting to, was this space. - This one.
0:21:36 > 0:21:41I'd made little drawings and then, when I got back to LA,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44actually, that's the first thing I did.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48- It's painted from memory, the memory of the road... - Of the road itself.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51..again moving through a landscape.
0:21:51 > 0:21:57- This is the road from York down towards Bridlington. - Yeah, yeah, down towards York, yeah.
0:21:57 > 0:22:01- That's the road to York through Sledmere.- Yeah.
0:22:01 > 0:22:03Again, I kept driving through it.
0:22:03 > 0:22:06Do you know, my sister-in-law, when she saw the painting afterwards
0:22:06 > 0:22:11she said "Do you know, I never realised it was red and green, Sledmere."
0:22:11 > 0:22:15"All the houses are red." I said, "Well, you didn't look hard enough."
0:22:15 > 0:22:17I mean, it is.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22Again, it was... Yes, the idea of the landscape through a journey.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29To what extent do you think you have been able to paint
0:22:29 > 0:22:33these extraordinarily vivid paintings of England?
0:22:33 > 0:22:36Because you learned a new...
0:22:36 > 0:22:38- Because I lived in California for 30 years.- Exactly.
0:22:38 > 0:22:41A new vocabulary of colour in California.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46Yeah. Well, they're Yorkshire landscapes painted by someone who's lived in LA for 30 years.
0:22:46 > 0:22:49As I say, I never intended to...
0:22:49 > 0:22:53When I came back, I didn't say, "I'm leaving Cal..." I didn't.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57If people asked me where I lived, I'd tell them I lived wherever I happened to be
0:22:57 > 0:23:02and I'd point out in Hollywood, we'd say, "I'm on location."
0:23:02 > 0:23:03This is location, isn't it?
0:23:23 > 0:23:25I was getting to enjoy the landscape.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29- By the time here, I'd settled in here.- Yes.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32These were... I did watercolours first. They kept one.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35- The wall of watercolours. - A wall of watercolours.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39- I wanted to show the hand, meaning something flowing.- Yes.
0:23:39 > 0:23:41Heart and hand and eye.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45That's the Chinese, that's what you need for painting.
0:23:45 > 0:23:49You need three things - the hand, the eye and the heart.
0:23:49 > 0:23:53Two won't do. It's very, very good, I think.
0:23:53 > 0:23:59It's very true, and when you think of Rembrandt drawings, isn't that what they are?
0:23:59 > 0:24:03Everything, that's what they are. The hand, the eye and the heart. There it is.
0:24:05 > 0:24:11These were when I decided to work from observation to develop perhaps
0:24:11 > 0:24:16marks or something, so I just chose watercolour first.
0:24:16 > 0:24:17This was summer.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20Could you explain for me - I remember you once explaining
0:24:20 > 0:24:24the difficulty of watercolour is that you paint in reverse, almost.
0:24:24 > 0:24:28Well, yes, you have to work from light to dark.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32Once you've got a dark there, you can't put anything light on it
0:24:32 > 0:24:38unless you take it out. You can with difficulty, but it can't...
0:24:38 > 0:24:43So you have to... You learn this quickly, you work from light to dark.
0:24:43 > 0:24:49Again, it's stimulates you. It makes you think out things.
0:24:49 > 0:24:53There were some techniques where you have to...
0:24:53 > 0:24:57Where was it? Painting of corn, yeah.
0:24:57 > 0:25:02- All that was drawn positively with rubber cement.- Oh, yes.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06- So it was white. Exactly, then you rub it off with...- You've to think, then you rub it off.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09You find these techniques and, in a way,
0:25:09 > 0:25:13the sketchbooks of these led to the iPad.
0:25:13 > 0:25:15I was going to ask. There is clearly a relationship.
0:25:15 > 0:25:22- These are two or three hours. These are a few more hours, each one.- Yes.
0:25:22 > 0:25:24And I didn't always exhibit those.
0:25:24 > 0:25:31But I think putting them together, like that - I added to them - shows you what I was doing.
0:25:31 > 0:25:33- Just simply going out and looking at it.- Yes.
0:25:33 > 0:25:38Certainly in some of them there is a very strong sense of bigness and space, as well.
0:25:38 > 0:25:43I am affected, I know I'm affected by the space. It thrills me, I get a thrill.
0:25:43 > 0:25:45- Yes.- Doesn't everybody? It does me.
0:25:45 > 0:25:49- And in painting, I've always made space.- Yes.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52How to put figures in space and so on.
0:25:55 > 0:25:58One of the first painting spots he settled on
0:25:58 > 0:26:02was a rather ordinary farm track that's become known as The Tunnel.
0:26:05 > 0:26:09David, can I ask what first attracted you to this particular place?
0:26:09 > 0:26:13- Because you painted here a lot. - Well, it was in the summer.
0:26:13 > 0:26:18So...it was actually quite dark in here.
0:26:18 > 0:26:23Well, where the trees came round and you could see there was almost
0:26:23 > 0:26:28a spiral in here from the shadows
0:26:28 > 0:26:34and it caught my eye and I did a small painting, actually.
0:26:34 > 0:26:36And then I'd look at it again
0:26:36 > 0:26:41and then begin to see, of course, it was go to change.
0:26:41 > 0:26:47And especially change from what I'd done originally.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52- So I just kept coming back and then I made them bigger.- Yep.
0:26:52 > 0:26:54All the next paintings were bigger
0:26:54 > 0:26:59and then it was here that I decided I wanted to do them a lot bigger
0:26:59 > 0:27:05and it was here we first brought six canvases out.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08And is this about being inside the landscape?
0:27:08 > 0:27:10You are surrounded here, 360 degrees.
0:27:10 > 0:27:15- You're looking up, down.- Yeah. - Is that what the scale is for? - Yes, it is.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19Remember, when you... Well, I'll show you films later,
0:27:19 > 0:27:23but any cameraman will tell you - Hollywood cameramen will, anyway -
0:27:23 > 0:27:28it's not so easy to film the tallness of trees, for instance.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32because you have to look up to see the tallness.
0:27:32 > 0:27:37- And it's the tallness that would give you the majesty of the tree, isn't it?- Yes.
0:27:37 > 0:27:42The majestic nature. And so it was that.
0:27:42 > 0:27:47I wanted to expand it from one canvas,
0:27:47 > 0:27:52so I just did what I'd do with a Polaroid or something.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55You just put one next to the other, make it bigger.
0:27:55 > 0:27:59Remember, if you're doing anything big...
0:28:00 > 0:28:05..in any kind of art, actually, the major problems are because they're big.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08A great big canvas, you've technical problems,
0:28:08 > 0:28:13because you're a certain size. I can only reach so far.
0:28:13 > 0:28:18And if it's 12 foot, how do I get to the top of the canvas?
0:28:18 > 0:28:20OK, you can go up on a ladder,
0:28:20 > 0:28:24- but if you're up on a ladder, you can't...- You can't stand back!
0:28:24 > 0:28:27No, you can't stand back, you can't paint that freely.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29So you don't want to do that.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32A lot of people would say, why not paint from a photograph?
0:28:32 > 0:28:36Why go to the bother of standing out in front of the trees when you paint?
0:28:36 > 0:28:39Well, you just get a totally different reaction.
0:28:39 > 0:28:41I think, in the end,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44the world doesn't quite look like photographs.
0:28:44 > 0:28:46Cameras give you a certain kind of view,
0:28:46 > 0:28:49but it's not quite the human view, I think.
0:28:49 > 0:28:55The idea of being able to work on a big scale outside is terrific.
0:28:55 > 0:28:59Remember, Constable, when he did those big canvases,
0:28:59 > 0:29:02they were all done indoors. He did it from memory,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05because of technical problems.
0:29:05 > 0:29:10His main technical problem, he didn't have tubes of paint.
0:29:10 > 0:29:12He only had bladders of paint.
0:29:12 > 0:29:17- This is about 20 or 30 years before the first metal tubes were available?- That's it.
0:29:17 > 0:29:20So he would have great difficulty working outside.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24The invention of the collapsible tube opened up Impressionism.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28I mean, meaning you can suddenly work anywhere.
0:29:28 > 0:29:32- These are...- Fresh ready-mixed colours you can just use?
0:29:32 > 0:29:35Technology is altering things.
0:29:35 > 0:29:39It's probably doing that all the time.
0:29:42 > 0:29:45If you've lived in California the length of time I did,
0:29:45 > 0:29:49it is fantastic watching,
0:29:49 > 0:29:52not just a bush change but the whole area.
0:29:52 > 0:29:57Again, every day would be a different colour.
0:29:57 > 0:30:03I mean, look at the variety in the trees.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06There's a hell of a lot you can see, isn't there?
0:30:08 > 0:30:10The textures.
0:30:10 > 0:30:15There's so much to look at, actually. If you're painting,
0:30:15 > 0:30:18you're editing, you're forced to be.
0:30:20 > 0:30:23I love the knobbly things.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26I'm eating all the Maltesers!
0:30:26 > 0:30:28ANDREW LAUGHS
0:30:28 > 0:30:33This was actually the first painting where I put six canvases together.
0:30:33 > 0:30:38This is the first one. I immediately knew... It's called Closer.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41You feel closer, actually... you feel closer to the trees,
0:30:41 > 0:30:43you feel closer to the thing.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46This was painted outside there.
0:30:46 > 0:30:50- Where we were standing. - In the mud. I mean, we had mud.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53I then realised, "Ah, we're moving on,
0:30:53 > 0:30:56"this is fascinating, what you can do."
0:30:56 > 0:30:58And then I did all those woods.
0:30:58 > 0:31:01But the paintings are beginning to get bigger,
0:31:01 > 0:31:05and I'm finding ways that you can make big paintings
0:31:05 > 0:31:10without too much difficulty, meaning aware it's a technical difficulty.
0:31:10 > 0:31:13Can I ask about the colour, David?
0:31:13 > 0:31:16Because it seems to be, in these pictures,
0:31:16 > 0:31:20you are pulling out more pinks and oranges
0:31:20 > 0:31:23- and bright greens than you were doing even when you started.- Yeah.
0:31:23 > 0:31:28And you're on the journey towards the big woodland paintings which are unbelievable.
0:31:28 > 0:31:33When you're stood there - I haven't done this for a long time -
0:31:33 > 0:31:37you're stood there and you start asking yourself about colour.
0:31:37 > 0:31:41What is it you're seeing? Cos you have to look hard to see.
0:31:41 > 0:31:46I mean, it's... You ask about the colour of the ground and so on
0:31:46 > 0:31:49and then you want to relate them.
0:31:49 > 0:31:54It's then that you start seeing, "Well, these are pinks, really,
0:31:54 > 0:32:00"these are not greys," and you are seeing more.
0:32:01 > 0:32:06I always ask questions. "What colour is it really?"
0:32:06 > 0:32:10And it has to relate to others. "How does it relate?"
0:32:10 > 0:32:15- Also, green is not an easy colour to use.- It's really not.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19Most artists would tell you that. Some hate it.
0:32:19 > 0:32:22Turner didn't like green, Mondrian was horrified by green.
0:32:22 > 0:32:26Well, if you're painting England, it is green, there's no doubt,
0:32:26 > 0:32:29but it is all kinds of different green,
0:32:29 > 0:32:33and, of course, different times of day...
0:32:33 > 0:32:35But I'm well aware it's not so easy.
0:32:48 > 0:32:54Another subject Hockney returns to time and time again
0:32:54 > 0:32:55is known as the Totem.
0:32:55 > 0:32:59This was a dead tree, you see, it had died.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01And it was a good subject in the summer.
0:33:07 > 0:33:11Can I just say one thing? This is what great painting does.
0:33:11 > 0:33:16I bounced out of the car just now, I go, "Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it wonderful?"
0:33:16 > 0:33:19It's just a tree stump! It's not particularly beautiful.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22But because I know it from the paintings, I'm going, "Ah, ah."
0:33:22 > 0:33:25- That's the magic. - There's a lot that comes together.
0:33:25 > 0:33:27To be able to do what we did here,
0:33:27 > 0:33:32especially with the films as well, but painting and drawing,
0:33:32 > 0:33:36we were never bothered. We were just mostly on our own.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40It's important for you to have subjects
0:33:40 > 0:33:42which you return to again and again.
0:33:42 > 0:33:46I mean, Monet had his haystacks and you've got a tree stump...
0:33:46 > 0:33:50Remember, the dramatic subject here is the change, actually.
0:33:50 > 0:33:53Not just today -
0:33:53 > 0:33:57- it's when you see it in another week, or two weeks.- Yes.
0:33:57 > 0:34:02So, in a way, you then come back to the same place.
0:34:02 > 0:34:07It becomes a motif that is going to look very different.
0:34:07 > 0:34:12I mean, there's a lot of iPad drawings of this
0:34:12 > 0:34:17in different colours. Misty red morning...
0:34:17 > 0:34:21I'd just come along here and if I saw it different, I'd do another picture.
0:34:21 > 0:34:23With the iPad, you can do them quickly,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26you've got the time to capture them.
0:34:26 > 0:34:29You can capture the mood and the palette very quickly.
0:34:29 > 0:34:35By the time I was drawing on here with the iPad,
0:34:35 > 0:34:40I had been using it for about eight months so I'd got rather good at it.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45I'd realised this - that you could, very, very quickly,
0:34:45 > 0:34:48establish five colours down there,
0:34:48 > 0:34:51generally these reddy-greens, or whatever.
0:34:51 > 0:34:56You can do them very quick. Quicker than anything else I know.
0:34:56 > 0:35:00Because a coloured pencil, you can't do a mass that quickly.
0:35:00 > 0:35:06Watercolour, you'd need a big brush, you've to let it dry.
0:35:06 > 0:35:11Here, you can do it in seconds, actually. And so it's a...
0:35:11 > 0:35:17It's certainly a new medium, and terrific for certain things.
0:35:17 > 0:35:22I found it was good for luminous subjects - sunrise,
0:35:22 > 0:35:26- or something like that.- Because you've got a back-lit screen.- Yeah.
0:35:26 > 0:35:29But also this fact that you could put
0:35:29 > 0:35:35quite a subtle range of colour down very, very quickly,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38quicker than anything else I'd ever come across.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41I'm sure loads of other artists will find that.
0:35:45 > 0:35:50I mean, it's pretty rotten, isn't it, actually? You can see it.
0:35:50 > 0:35:55When you've drawn them a lot, they become quite special to you. They do.
0:35:55 > 0:35:57Of course.
0:35:58 > 0:36:03It's the lack of people, that's the great thing, I'll tell you.
0:36:03 > 0:36:06The Cotswolds are crowded by comparison.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17I will say this, deafness plays a little part in it for me,
0:36:17 > 0:36:22in the sense that I have a harder time in the big city,
0:36:22 > 0:36:25because of my hearing.
0:36:25 > 0:36:29Long before you couldn't smoke in the restaurants in LA,
0:36:29 > 0:36:33I'd stopped going to them mostly, because they were too noisy.
0:36:33 > 0:36:35I couldn't...
0:36:35 > 0:36:38If it's noisy, I just hear one big cacophony,
0:36:38 > 0:36:41and I couldn't hear people near me.
0:36:41 > 0:36:46That is a powerful thing on you, of course.
0:36:46 > 0:36:48I like silence as well.
0:36:48 > 0:36:52I do like silence. If you like music, you like silence.
0:36:52 > 0:36:57- Some people don't, but I do. - And this is quite a silent part of the country,
0:36:57 > 0:37:01in the sense that it doesn't have any through traffic.
0:37:01 > 0:37:05People have to want to come to Bridlington to come here.
0:37:05 > 0:37:08It's on the road to nowhere.
0:37:12 > 0:37:17I used to think there were dull days here for a while,
0:37:17 > 0:37:21but after about two years, I decided there wasn't.
0:37:21 > 0:37:26Even a day like this has qualities you won't see maybe tomorrow,
0:37:26 > 0:37:29or something, or this morning when it was sunny.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32But you see, to see the colour here,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35you've to start looking for quite a while.
0:37:35 > 0:37:40You've to look and look. But it isn't black and white.
0:37:40 > 0:37:41No, it's certainly not.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01I should just explain that we're here in the Woldgate Woods
0:38:01 > 0:38:06where a series of the most exciting, huge sets of paintings that David has made
0:38:06 > 0:38:10- were painted from or less where we're standing?- Yeah.- Yeah.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12Looking down that way.
0:38:12 > 0:38:15And what they will show
0:38:15 > 0:38:18is the most extraordinary greens and reds,
0:38:18 > 0:38:20and, at different times of the year, mist.
0:38:24 > 0:38:29I did about nine in a year, covering a year,
0:38:29 > 0:38:35so it was two each season or more. Yeah, there was a mist.
0:38:35 > 0:38:40And the mist took a while and, of course, the mist had gone.
0:38:40 > 0:38:44But because I'd figured out how to do the misty trees,
0:38:44 > 0:38:48I had to come back and still look at them to do it.
0:38:48 > 0:38:51- As if they were misty. - As if they were misty.
0:38:51 > 0:38:55Bu the mist only stayed for two or three hours.
0:38:55 > 0:38:59And you're trying to work as fast as possible when you're outside.
0:39:01 > 0:39:03I like that.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09'Hockney is making a series of paintings of this one spot
0:39:09 > 0:39:11'called Woldgate Woods.
0:39:11 > 0:39:14'By using the same composition,
0:39:14 > 0:39:17'he can complete six panels in a day or two.'
0:39:17 > 0:39:22'The first winter one took about three weeks to do
0:39:22 > 0:39:26'because I was drawing it for the first time.
0:39:26 > 0:39:30'Now I'd be able to do them much quicker,
0:39:30 > 0:39:35'meaning I go for a special effect of that day.'
0:39:43 > 0:39:47- Got the- BLEEP- sun coming up.
0:39:47 > 0:39:51And the more you put in through oil paint onto the surface,
0:39:51 > 0:39:56the more there is there for the viewer one day to unlock and suck back out again.
0:39:56 > 0:39:58I should think so. Yeah, yeah.
0:39:58 > 0:40:03I mean, the time you put in is visible.
0:40:03 > 0:40:07I was conscious of always leaving marks,
0:40:07 > 0:40:11not covering up too many marks, leave them visible,
0:40:11 > 0:40:16because that's leaving time visible and the process visible.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20Generally, you'd only cover up a mark in painting
0:40:20 > 0:40:22if you wanted to make an illusion.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43See, there's still not much traffic out here.
0:40:43 > 0:40:48We thought we were really amazingly lucky what we'd found here,
0:40:48 > 0:40:50what I'd found.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53And yet to most people, it looks like nothing. You know, it's just a...
0:40:53 > 0:41:00Well, my sister, for instance, when we'd done two here -
0:41:00 > 0:41:04my sister, who had lived in Bridlington for 30 years -
0:41:04 > 0:41:06asked me where it was, you see.
0:41:06 > 0:41:10I said, "Oh, well, it's on Woldgate. She used to come driving here.
0:41:10 > 0:41:16I said, "Well, you have to get out the car and walk a little bit and stuff."
0:41:16 > 0:41:21But not many people do here, really.
0:41:21 > 0:41:24Actually, this is where a lot of people just dump things.
0:41:24 > 0:41:29Sometimes, you'd have old refrigerators and things.
0:41:29 > 0:41:34We thought they looked like sculptures placed here or something.
0:41:34 > 0:41:39There's a poem of Wallace Stevens'.
0:41:39 > 0:41:42"I placed a jar in Tennessee."
0:41:43 > 0:41:46Alone it stood upon a hill.
0:41:46 > 0:41:50Putting something in the landscape alters it.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54It made me, actually, when they put the refrigerators here,
0:41:54 > 0:41:56it made me think of it then.
0:41:56 > 0:42:01- I suppose there is another way you could look at it, it's not too bad.- No.
0:42:01 > 0:42:05- It depends how many refrigerators, I guess!- Yeah, OK.
0:42:06 > 0:42:12You paint with memory even when you're here. No such thing as...
0:42:12 > 0:42:14Objective.
0:42:14 > 0:42:20You're painting from memory of yesterday morning.
0:42:20 > 0:42:22We always see with memory.
0:42:23 > 0:42:26And seeing each person's memory is a bit different.
0:42:28 > 0:42:31We can't be looking at the same things, can we?
0:42:35 > 0:42:36We're all on our own.
0:42:53 > 0:42:58I could come and do them again, and it would be different again.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02- It would be painted differently.- Yes. - The marks would be different.
0:43:11 > 0:43:15Again, I get the impression that the message is not,
0:43:15 > 0:43:18"Come and see this extraordinary landscape,"
0:43:18 > 0:43:23it's, "Look harder, and look for longer, wherever you live, wherever you are."
0:43:23 > 0:43:27Well, yes, it is saying that. I mean, I think that's true. I think...
0:43:29 > 0:43:32..I think Van Gogh was saying things like that.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36I'm always pointing out, if you took Van Gogh
0:43:36 > 0:43:43and put him into the dreariest kind of American motel room,
0:43:43 > 0:43:45I suspect, at the end of a week,
0:43:45 > 0:43:49he'd still come out with interesting paintings.
0:43:49 > 0:43:54The hole in the carpet he'd paint, wouldn't he?
0:43:54 > 0:43:58Somehow, everything becomes interesting, because he's looking at it.
0:44:01 > 0:44:04So to paint a place, you have to have a lot of knowledge -
0:44:04 > 0:44:09you have to have acquired knowledge about light and the foliage
0:44:09 > 0:44:13- and what you're looking at before you can really paint it?- Yes.
0:44:13 > 0:44:18Because you have to understand... For instance, the arrival of spring
0:44:18 > 0:44:23is an event that, for six weeks, it will be changing almost daily.
0:44:23 > 0:44:25So, you know, you're doing this,
0:44:25 > 0:44:30well, it take a year or two to sort that out in an orderly way,
0:44:30 > 0:44:33because you have to have one spring, and then wait for the other.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36So it does take time,
0:44:36 > 0:44:40and I don't think you can just suddenly come one April
0:44:40 > 0:44:42and just do it.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54Hockney's close observation of the cycles of nature
0:44:54 > 0:44:58is behind a show stopper of the Academy exhibition
0:44:58 > 0:45:01dedicated to the arrival of spring.
0:45:01 > 0:45:04The largest gallery in the Academy
0:45:04 > 0:45:10has been turned into a single work of art made up of 51 iPad prints...
0:45:11 > 0:45:15..and a massive end-wall painting.
0:45:17 > 0:45:21- If you come down here and look at it, I mean...- Yeah.- You'll see...
0:45:21 > 0:45:25- You look through there.- You can't do this with the real building.
0:45:25 > 0:45:29To do the spring, you had to begin in the winter
0:45:29 > 0:45:32because you have to show the change, so you've got to show
0:45:32 > 0:45:34before and after, and becoming.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37This sequence starts in the winter, and then works its way
0:45:37 > 0:45:42- through the room.- It starts here in the winter and goes on until June.
0:45:42 > 0:45:46And I was out there every day, watching everything,
0:45:46 > 0:45:49as the grass begins, as the little flowers,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52the first spring flowers are coming out.
0:45:52 > 0:45:57So it's all there in order, and I assume there might be people
0:45:57 > 0:46:01who know nature rather well, so everything is in order.
0:46:01 > 0:46:04Because I thought, "Well, it has to be. I'll do that."
0:46:18 > 0:46:22I can't think of a room that's been designed this way before.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26- I can't think of something that's... - Well, I don't suppose this room - THIS room -
0:46:26 > 0:46:29was ever given out to someone, an artist,
0:46:29 > 0:46:31the way they gave it to me, in a sense.
0:46:33 > 0:46:36There's no historical record of it,
0:46:36 > 0:46:40and it wouldn't happen much, but it is...
0:46:40 > 0:46:43- a very grand, splendid room. - It certainly is.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47- And so you need a big, splendid subject, I think.- Yes.
0:46:47 > 0:46:49- Well, that's what- I- thought.
0:46:49 > 0:46:52- And the arrival of spring is one. - It is, absolutely.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57Can I ask about the iPad specifically, David?
0:46:57 > 0:47:01Because someone coming in here will look at these pictures
0:47:01 > 0:47:05and the first thing, if they don't know about it, they'll think, "What are they made with?"
0:47:05 > 0:47:09They're not oil, they're not gouache, they're not watercolour.
0:47:09 > 0:47:12They are something new, aren't they?
0:47:12 > 0:47:14The quality of the colour is different.
0:47:14 > 0:47:19There are new forms of printing about, and unless you're...
0:47:19 > 0:47:23If you're just printing colour photographs from them,
0:47:23 > 0:47:25you're not going to get that much interesting...
0:47:25 > 0:47:28What you put in the machine will come out.
0:47:28 > 0:47:31And I began to be aware that you could, if you...
0:47:31 > 0:47:35For instance, I knew these pictures were going to be
0:47:35 > 0:47:38- about five-foot high, when I'm drawing them on the iPad.- Yes.
0:47:38 > 0:47:43And in a way, you begin to draw knowing about the printing machine,
0:47:43 > 0:47:46- what colours will do.- Yeah, I see.
0:47:46 > 0:47:50And it's a very free method. You can see they're hand-drawn.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54You can see the hand working.
0:47:54 > 0:47:58And it's the most direct thing I've ever come across.
0:47:58 > 0:48:03I will point out, you couldn't have done this without a massive wall,
0:48:03 > 0:48:07because you have to print them out to see them, and sometimes,
0:48:07 > 0:48:09when I print them out, I then go back to work on it.
0:48:09 > 0:48:13You think, "Well, I'll work on this area, do this," and you can, you see,
0:48:13 > 0:48:18but without a vast wall, you wouldn't even conceive it,
0:48:18 > 0:48:23because you have to see the print. You have to see it printed like this.
0:48:23 > 0:48:29But I then realised, "This is moving into newer territory with the iPad,"
0:48:29 > 0:48:33and if you understand the printing machine and draw accordingly,
0:48:33 > 0:48:36you can get very, very good things.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39You are working phenomenally hard.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42For those people who go, "David Hockney,
0:48:42 > 0:48:45"swimming pools, Californian sun, bit of a hedonist,
0:48:45 > 0:48:46"probably hangs around..."
0:48:46 > 0:48:50Just tell me about how hard you're working and have been for the last seven years.
0:48:50 > 0:48:56Well, I would point this out. An artist can support hedonism
0:48:56 > 0:49:00but he can't be a hedonist himself, because artists are workers.
0:49:00 > 0:49:02By the definition, they work.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04But you could support the idea of hedonism.
0:49:04 > 0:49:07You're in favour of it in principle. In practice, you're out there
0:49:07 > 0:49:10in your gumboots and your cap in all weathers.
0:49:10 > 0:49:12Yeah.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14In the biting Yorkshire wind.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16So was Matisse, wasn't he? I mean,
0:49:16 > 0:49:21you have to notice what the artist does and not what they say, really.
0:49:24 > 0:49:28There's a very interesting poster that's going up at the beginning,
0:49:28 > 0:49:31which says that all the artworks here
0:49:31 > 0:49:34were made by the hand of the artist himself.
0:49:34 > 0:49:38- Personally, by himself.- I wonder, there's no agenda there?
0:49:38 > 0:49:42- You're not referring to anybody else, I'm sure, are you? - HE LAUGHS
0:49:42 > 0:49:46Well, I am, actually, yeah. Well, it's an argument about the hand.
0:49:46 > 0:49:52- Yes.- Remember... I would say the hand counts. Yes,- I- would.
0:49:52 > 0:49:57- But there are a whole school of artists who say it wouldn't.- Yes.
0:49:57 > 0:50:01- Damien Hirst and all that lot. - Yeah, Gilbert and George would.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05They use it because the reason they would play down the hand
0:50:05 > 0:50:08is because there's two of them, and really only one of them
0:50:08 > 0:50:12uses the hand, but you don't know which it is.
0:50:13 > 0:50:19But otherwise, frankly, it's a little bit insulting to craftsmen, isn't it?
0:50:21 > 0:50:24- You're an artist but you have to be a craftsman as well.- Yes.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28- It's, "What is art and what is craft?"- Yeah.
0:50:28 > 0:50:32Yeah, in fact, I used to point out, in an art school,
0:50:32 > 0:50:34you can teach the craft.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37It's the poetry you can't teach.
0:50:37 > 0:50:41But now they try to teach the poetry and forget the craft.
0:50:41 > 0:50:45It's craft that can be taught. You can teach skills,
0:50:45 > 0:50:47and skills are practised, aren't they?
0:50:50 > 0:50:55Lift it up a bit, Jonathan. Up.
0:50:55 > 0:50:57Hockey's been picking up some new skills.
0:50:57 > 0:51:02With his team in Bridlington he's begun making films.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07His big idea was to mount a grid of nine cameras onto a Jeep.
0:51:07 > 0:51:11One picture, but nine subtly different points of view.
0:51:13 > 0:51:18I'd used one camera occasionally but I did begin to see,
0:51:18 > 0:51:22well, you could now start making different-looking films
0:51:22 > 0:51:26because the cameras have got smaller.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30Very small, actually. You don't need a camera this big at all, do you?
0:51:30 > 0:51:34So you could put a few together.
0:51:34 > 0:51:40This is kind of... Cleopatra would have had cameras like this, really.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45The subject matter is the same as the paintings -
0:51:45 > 0:51:49nature in all its seasons, and all its detail.
0:51:51 > 0:51:55And it's the only way you can make a new bigger picture.
0:51:55 > 0:51:58They think the only way is to just project it bigger,
0:51:58 > 0:52:01but the bigger you project it, remember - and it's the same time
0:52:01 > 0:52:03in every part of the screen -
0:52:03 > 0:52:08the bigger you're projecting it, therefore, it's going to get flatter and flatter,
0:52:08 > 0:52:12because you're not really adding time or anything.
0:52:12 > 0:52:15The only way you can add time to it is this way,
0:52:15 > 0:52:18in this form, a kind of collage.
0:52:18 > 0:52:22And so, you're not... You're not telling the observer where to look.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25We're not telling you where to look at all.
0:52:26 > 0:52:30'And here's a moment for both of us to shut up
0:52:30 > 0:52:33'and you, the viewer, to simply look.'
0:53:09 > 0:53:14'At the Royal Academy, nine screens have become 18.' Wow.
0:53:17 > 0:53:20These are still using nine cameras.
0:53:20 > 0:53:26All we did to use the 18 screens was move it along in time.
0:53:26 > 0:53:30So I then realised, my God, you could also draw,
0:53:30 > 0:53:33not just in space, in time, actually, with it.
0:53:33 > 0:53:37And I was rather thrilled by this, because I thought,
0:53:37 > 0:53:42- "Well, it is a critique of one camera."- Yes.
0:53:42 > 0:53:46However much definition you get from it,
0:53:46 > 0:53:52it's still one picture with the same time in every part of the picture.
0:53:52 > 0:53:56- You're told where to look. - And you're told where to look. Here,
0:53:56 > 0:54:00it's a different time in 18 parts of the picture,
0:54:00 > 0:54:03and you're not told where to look, so you begin to scan,
0:54:03 > 0:54:05which is what we do in reality -
0:54:05 > 0:54:08it's never the same time in each moment,
0:54:08 > 0:54:12so we probably make the space from time in some way.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15Photography's not the ultimate thing.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19I mean, it means it's just a stage in a way of picture-making
0:54:19 > 0:54:24that is now altering, because there's the technology.
0:54:24 > 0:54:27Here we're making a bigger picture, I think.
0:54:27 > 0:54:31And so I rather enjoy saying, "You at the television,
0:54:31 > 0:54:35"well, we can make a bigger picture than you can."
0:54:35 > 0:54:41And perhaps that's, as I say, why we have not looked at something.
0:54:41 > 0:54:45I think pictures make us look at the world. They make us see things.
0:54:45 > 0:54:50And that single camera might have... I always used to say,
0:54:50 > 0:54:53"Well, a television picture's too poky.
0:54:53 > 0:54:54"You don't see enough."
0:54:54 > 0:54:57And maybe that's me being...
0:54:57 > 0:55:03I'm a bit claustrophobic, for instance. I like great big spaces.
0:55:03 > 0:55:05So it might be just me, that, but nevertheless,
0:55:05 > 0:55:09some other people have agreed with me after seeing this.
0:55:11 > 0:55:15- Do you know the Fellini film The Ship Sails On?- No.
0:55:15 > 0:55:18You can get it on DVD.
0:55:18 > 0:55:22It's all about the difficulties of depiction...
0:55:24 > 0:55:27As you walk around the show, it's impossible
0:55:27 > 0:55:33not to be moved by all the restless colour and the shimmy of life,
0:55:33 > 0:55:37but when you get to Winter Timber, you can't help thinking about mortality.
0:55:37 > 0:55:40The cut wood is shocking
0:55:40 > 0:55:43and the deep colours a garishly bold statement,
0:55:43 > 0:55:44almost angry.
0:55:44 > 0:55:50At 74, David Hockney's reinvented himself as a landscape painter
0:55:50 > 0:55:55but perhaps that's what makes The Arrival Of Spring so impressive.
0:55:55 > 0:55:58This feels like a very young painting,
0:55:58 > 0:56:00capturing that moment of renewal
0:56:00 > 0:56:04when the new leaves seem to be floating in space.
0:56:09 > 0:56:12In the year past, we've lost another friend of yours,
0:56:12 > 0:56:16the great painter Lucian Freud, and as YOU get older,
0:56:16 > 0:56:18you seem to be working harder and harder.
0:56:18 > 0:56:22You're sort of flinging yourself into more and more projects,
0:56:22 > 0:56:25and I wonder if there's a sense of acceleration,
0:56:25 > 0:56:29hunger, to complete projects and to find new ones
0:56:29 > 0:56:31that's to do with getting older.
0:56:31 > 0:56:38Well, probably. Because, frankly, if I'm not busy, I'm hopeless, me.
0:56:38 > 0:56:42My friends tell me that. "It's always good if you're working, David.
0:56:42 > 0:56:47"You're terrible if you're not working." And, anyway, I want to.
0:56:47 > 0:56:53A lot of artists get very active as they get older. A lot.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58I certainly don't want to slow down. I mean, I always work.
0:56:58 > 0:57:00I don't stop working.
0:57:00 > 0:57:02I'd say, look, we're on a roll and if we're on a roll,
0:57:02 > 0:57:07just keep it going, because it will stop eventually,
0:57:07 > 0:57:08but we don't know when,
0:57:08 > 0:57:12and we're doing it in the paintings, drawings, everything.
0:57:12 > 0:57:15Let's keep it going as much as we can.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19And I intend to, and I still intend to. We haven't stopped.
0:57:19 > 0:57:24Yeah, I feel very, very active. I'm not feeling...
0:57:24 > 0:57:29And, actually, I think... I even think we're a bit ahead as well,
0:57:29 > 0:57:34- meaning not many people are exploring these areas.- The new future?
0:57:34 > 0:57:39As I say, I realise there are problems with all kinds of depiction.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44I'm interested in depiction. Not all artists are, but I am,
0:57:44 > 0:57:47and I will go on being interested in it.
0:57:49 > 0:57:52There's nothing here that is political painting
0:57:52 > 0:57:55and yet it seems to me that, you know, at a time
0:57:55 > 0:57:57when people are worried about England
0:57:57 > 0:57:59and the condition of England and so on,
0:57:59 > 0:58:01they think it's all going away,
0:58:01 > 0:58:04actually, what you're saying to people is, "Look harder and it's not.
0:58:04 > 0:58:10- "It's all still there."- Yes, it is. - Is that true? Is that fair? - It is. Yes, it is. It is, actually.
0:58:10 > 0:58:12And it's very beautiful.
0:58:12 > 0:58:17We live in a very, very beautiful part of the world that has...
0:58:17 > 0:58:20As I say, it has seasons that change.
0:58:20 > 0:58:24Ruskin said there was no such thing as bad weather in England.
0:58:24 > 0:58:29He pointed out it's never too hot, it's never too cold.
0:58:29 > 0:58:31It's always bearable.
0:58:31 > 0:58:34If you want a green garden, you've got to have rain.
0:58:34 > 0:58:37I mean, it's all part of it. I agree with him.
0:58:37 > 0:58:40I mean, I criticise a bit when they say the weather's bad
0:58:40 > 0:58:43on the weather forecast. I always think, "For who?"
0:58:43 > 0:58:44You know? I mean...
0:58:44 > 0:58:49When it's... The moment it snows in Brid, we go out to see it.
0:59:02 > 0:59:07Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd