David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88

SSirLJ about 3 hours ago 11 commentsRead Article on nytimes.com

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Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

syspec•about 2 hours ago

Gift article link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/arts/design/david-hockney...

basisword•about 2 hours ago

His embrace of new technology was interesting, in particular the fact he's been doing a lot of work on an iPad since 2010. You can see many of them here[1]. I went to an exhibition[2] of these a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by them. Goes to show that it's the artist and the talent, not the tools.

[1] https://www.hockney.com/index.php/works/digital/ipad

[2] https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/article-david-hockne...

zimpenfish•about 1 hour ago

He was on the BBC messing around with a Quantel Paintbox[0] (although 1987 seems much later than I remember it being.)

[0] https://howard-hodgkin.com/resource/painting-with-light-quan...

xnorswap•25 minutes ago

What strikes me about that is how much "dead air" there is without background music and how much of a long-format that was for broadcast.

You just wouldn't get away with that on TV now, the closest thing is some twitch or youtube streams, but even they'd have relentless background music ( and donation/subscription thank you sounds ) and other media at the same time.

But an actual non-live, edited programme? This whole 90 minute programme would be edited down to a 10 minute segment with endless repetition and audio stings, even on the BBC.

To me this shows how much we've lost from the TV format and the ambition it once had. Somewhere since it has fallen into a weird combination of lack of ambition but with a self-congratulation, where programmes often restate what they are doing as being ground-breaking.

gryzzly•about 2 hours ago

Apart from just being so beautiful, so full of attention to nature and the world around us, his work also explored how photography can’t capture or communicate the seeing and feeling with two eyes. To that end, he embraced photography, attempted to express movement and volume using photo camera(s), his polaroid works are beautiful, and then he came back to painting. He wrote and spoke about his process and "seeing" the world a lot, I really recommend it if you are into visual arts.

martinclayton•about 1 hour ago

His work with photography influenced my thinking in the 1980s. The ideas of viewing time and moving focus I think are significant in human experience.

He talks about it, and you can see some of these works in a YT vid here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz5vWgKy2Sc

mellosouls•about 2 hours ago

Please use non-paywalled links for general news, eg:

David Hockney: Art's great innovator whose vivid paintings made him a household name

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck77rg88gd9o

reaperducer•about 1 hour ago

The Times has an Arts section, art critics, professional obituary writers, and a wealth of background in the area.

The BBC article was written by a guy who has precisely two articles published on the BBC.

I don't think it's wrong to want to read the best article, not the cheapest.

dofm•17 minutes ago

The cheapest? You’re not British are you! ;-)

The BBC’s arts coverage outright humbles the Times and has for decades. (Also better obituary writers IMO, but YMMV). It’s absolutely the BBC I would come to, to read about Hockney, not a Murdoch newspaper.

But inexpensive they are not.

Sam Woodhouse is a senior BBC journalist and that article includes footage from an outstanding BBC arts programme interview by another senior journalist, Katie Razzall.

Hopefully the BBC will interview one of their own greats, Melvyn Bragg, about him. Bragg and Hockney were friends for half a century.

cf100clunk•6 minutes ago

> The BBC’s arts coverage outright humbles the Times

The Guardian's coverage of music and arts culture is also worthy of top billing:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jun/12/artist-...

reaperducer•2 minutes ago

The BBC’s arts coverage

The link you provided was not to the BBC's arts coverage. It was to a BBC News article, again written by a generalist. The BBC does great things with the arts. I have been listening to BBC on shortwave since before you were born, and know it very often excels in that area. But this is not that. You are comparing two different things.

not a Murdoch newspaper.

The New York Times is not a Murdoch paper. That you believe this shows you know very little about the New York Times.

But inexpensive they are not.

Reading the article you linked to costs precisely $0.00 (£0). Reading the article from the Times costs money. Again, you are conflating the BBC as a whole with the BBC News web site.

Hopefully

Yes, hopefully. But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing the merits of the link you posted versus the link that was submitted.