New doc coming soon on David Hockney

Randall Wright directs the film on one of the greatest artists of our time

David Hockney has long been one of my favorite artists, so it's a delight to learn that a documentary about him will soon become available to American audiences.

Filmmaker Randall Wright, whose previous work includes Lucian Freud: A Painted Life, directed Hockney. The documentary will open Aprill 22 in New York [Film Society of Lincoln Center and Metrograph] and in Los Angeles [Laemmle Theaters]. A national release will follow.

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"Hockney is the definitive exploration of one of the most significant artists of his generation," according to a press release about the film. "For the first time, David Hockney has given access to his personal archive of photographs and film, resulting in an unparalleled visual diary of his life. The film chronicles Hockney’s vast career, from his early life in working-class Bradford [England], where his love for pictures was developed through his admiration for cinema, to his relocation to Hollywood where his life long struggle to escape labels (‘queer’, ‘working class’, 'figurative artist’) was fully realized."

Artist David Hockney. Photo by Ben Quinton for the Guardian

Hockney's photographic collage Pearblossom Highway is a phenomenal work that gets at the subjectivity of the human eye, the way our brain constructs images. It has always struck me that what Hockney captures is not what the eye sees but what the mind sees. There is a difference.

​I look forward to speaking with director Randall Wright soon about his film. Watch this space for an upcoming piece!