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Tuesday 8 March 2011

iPhone art

Images © David Hockney (these were originally available for free download )

David Hockney's latest exhibition in Salt's Mill in Saltaire is called 'Fresh Flowers'.  It shows paintings he has made using his iPhone and iPad.  A series of images - mostly paintings of flowers - are dramatically projected onto three large screens in a darkened gallery, so that the colours are vibrant and you can see the 'brushstrokes' ... made using his thumb and an iPhone app called 'Brushes'.

“After all, this is a medium of pure light, not ink or pigment, if anything more akin to a stained glass window than an illustration on paper.”

They do look very soft-focus, as in this photo, no doubt on account of being enlarged so much from the original iPhone size.  But the colours are wonderful, the paintings deceptively simple and - as with much modern art - you kind of feel that you might be able to create something similar, at the same time realising that really you couldn't!  (I did, however, create a very satisfying impressionistic photo made up of three of the images - only fear of litigation prevents me posting it here!!  The two above are by no means my favourites but they were available to download whereas the others are all copyrighted.)

There's an interesting article by Lawrence Wechsler from The New York Review of Books that explains this new development in Hockney's work.  One of the things I most like about David Hockney is his willingness to experiment and to embrace new technology, and I am always fascinated to hear him talk about his thought processes:

"It [ie: the iPhone] is always there in my pocket, there’s no thrashing about, scrambling for the right color. One can set to work immediately, there’s this wonderful impromptu quality, this freshness, to the activity; and when it’s over, best of all, there’s no mess, no clean-up. You just turn off the machine. Or, even better, you hit Send, and your little cohort of friends around the world gets to experience a similar immediacy. There’s something, finally, very intimate about the whole process."

(The artist David Hockney was born in Bradford, studied at Bradford College of Art and currently lives on the Yorkshire coast at Bridlington.  Salt's Mill in Saltaire holds a large collection of his work.)

15 comments:

  1. Always liked Hockney. This seems like a logical step for him, very nice images.

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  2. I was won over by Hockney in a fairly recent BBC documentary. In it, he moved about the landscape, in all weathers, doing what he does best.

    This new iPhone art is wonderful, and proves that the digital world has much to offer the Art world.

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  3. Absolutely fascinating...I do wish we could have been able to see your impressionistic photo, too ;)

    Michael (from @ Michael & Hanne)recently shared a beautiful, digital, landscape painting he'd done. I'd never seen anything like this before, but now it's clear there's a host of wonderful technological advances out there to be discovered...by those creative enough to try...what a marvellous world we live in!!!

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  4. Wonderful Mr Hockney - one of my favourite places to visit.

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  5. Just had a look at the App. It's £2.99 (which is expensive for an app). But the main problem is that I can't draw or paint - I doubt whether, in this case, my iPhone will help.

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  6. They're a lot like his Wolds landscape paintings. They definitely have his style. They're great.

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  7. It's an interesting concept, art on yout iPhone. I'm not sure whether I like these or not, but I di like the colours.

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  8. I like this and suddenly feel the need for an iPhhone...

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  9. I think it looks like abstraction from an eight-year old student in H's class. Just goes to say you can get away with anything when you are famous! Thanks Desiree for your compliments about my poor infamous attempts to get away with it! Mine are available for free download!!

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  10. These are beautifully and colorfully simple, but, no, I can't do that on my iPhone.

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  11. I'm amazed by what these instruments can do!

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  12. How interesting! It amazes me what can be done these days. I am relatively new to blogging and just happened across yours--I'll be back to check it out again. Come by my blog sometime. Mickie Brown

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  13. What next. iphone Art how amazing. It does look a bit like stained glass. Very interesting art.

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