Great book. Reads like the denouement of spell-binding mystery novel with the visual and textual evidence mounting piece by piece until the conclusion seems inevitable. As a working artist, Hockney teases out clues that may have eluded art historians. The book itself is a piece of artwork with excellent reproductions, skillful layout and beautiful typography.

There is one sore spot. Historical and scientific types will quickly notice that Hockney reached his conclusions BEFORE his two year search for evidence and that weaknesses in the argument and evidence are not fully considered. The examples appear selective and are possibly not representative. Looking at the sample artwork, you can see his point but would not be suprised to hear valid alternative explanations. Though not proof positive, the work is persuasive, enlightening and more than a little revolutionary.

The book came this morning. I opened it here and there for an hour or so. It is refreshing to see these issues addressed by a real mechanic/maker rather than Art Historians who in the end are audience, (well? educated audience) David Hockney has moved lots of paint and much else; he knows about these things, these pictures. I feel like I was talking shop with another painter this morning. What a book! and what a clear and direct use of digital technology to make a book. The book is revelatory because Hockney always reveals, so matter of fact, a man explaining his trade, saying it as it is.

Can we doubt the influence of optics on pictures? Heck no! Hockney easily proves that. It's all the other stuff he does along the way; Hockney has a good time when he works, he shares his good time with us. The luckiest readers of this book will be the non-painters. Hockney is going to tell them how it is to think like a painter. For me, it's so cool to look at (discuss? ) pictures with Hockney. I'm going to take this book in pieces, savor my time with it

2/4/02 Optics and painting/drawing both make edited copies of reality; these flat things we call pictures. Did the painters trace, draw, collage or all three; does the camera? It's all mark making. We make pictures so why would we not look at other pictures. A tree can't tell you how to draw it but a drawing of a tree just might. Huge numbers of people are still seduced by optical looking paintings; it is something of a standard. In economics that's called demand and over the centuries painters have fulfilled that demand. We still like all those pictures. Hockney is still right, optical pictures were and are the overwhelming force in the set of all pictures. Watch TV for an hour and you see vastly more frames than anyone in the 15-19th century saw in a life time. Hockney simply pointed at an evergrowing forest of optical images;

As usual. the scientific and historical types miss the forest because of the trees; for painters the big picture is the picture. All the detail in the world won't help a ridiculously constructed picture. The problem is the historical and scientific people are academics, painters are people who make things; it is a different form of intelligence. Clearly academic skill is prized in this culture but there are many other kinds of knowing; the academics should learn to see them.

As for the man who encouraged his son to trace; right on guy. If the kid wants to be a painter all that use of a pencil; that feel of how flat things work, even thinking about the picture, will be useful. Just remember to also encourage the making of more freehand marks; way more. Drawing from nature is it's own game; one that shouldn't be missed and drawing from imagination is cool too. In the end it all comes together.

It's not every contemporary artist who rewrites the history of modern painting, and pushes back the use of the Artist's lens to the Renaissance.

Hockney has changed the way we will consider the paintings of the old masters, and the historical basis for the newest art of our times.

The amazing thing is, that we've all looked at these same paintings, seen the same clues, perhaps even had the same alarm bells go off in our heads, but we allow inquiries to be stifled by accepeted art historical explanations. That is, until David Hockey applied the reason and passion for observation that only an artist can bring to the subject.

The book's arguments are beutifully illustrated, first visually, using the artworks themselves as historical documentation. Next with scholary reasearch whose meaning, in light of Hockney's visual arguments, brings the correspondence and criticism of the time into sharp focus. And finally, and most lively, you get to see the artist's theory evolve in the form of correspondence with scientists and scholars of today discussing cutting edge technological examinations of the old masterworks previously illustrated.

Quite simply, a MUST READ book!

- Ken Mora
kenmora.com