Artist David Hockney (English, born 1937)
Title Paul & Margaret Hockney
Date 2009
Medium Inkjet print
Dimensions Image: 49 × 33 1/2 in. (124.5 × 85.1 cm)
Sheet: 49 × 33 1/2 in. (124.5 × 85.1 cm)
Framed: 56 1/2 × 40 1/2 × 2 in. (143.5 × 102.9 × 5.1 cm)
Credit Line Museum purchase with funds from Anthony Moravec and the IU Art Museum’s Art Acquisition Fund, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2011.57
About this Work
David Hockney has long been fascinated with how artists use technology to produce their art—from the optical devices of the early Renaissance to the new media of the digital age. In 2008 he began using smart technology as his personal sketchbook. Hockney says “the computer is a useful tool. Photoshop is a computer tool for picture making. In effect it allows you to draw directly in a printing machine…. I used to think that the computer was too slow for a draughtsman….but things have improved, and it now enables me to draw very freely and fast with colour.”
Despite its twenty-first century means of creation, this work depicting two of the artist’s four siblings recalls his full-length portraits of the 1960s and 70s, such as the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art’s 1976 print Henry Seated with Tulips (Eskenazi Museum of Art 78.27.2). In a wry nod to how much technology has changed all of our lives, the brother and sister aren’t talking to or even looking at each other—but they are absorbed in their smart phones/PDAs.
