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True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney
Soon after the book's publication in 1982, artist David Hockney read Lawrence Weschler's Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin and invited Weschler to his studio to discuss it, initiating a series of engrossing dialogues, gathered here for the first time. Weschler chronicles Hockney's protean production and speculations, including his scenic designs for opera, his homemade xerographic prints, his exploration of physics in relation to Chinese landscape painting, his investigations into optical devices, his taking up of watercolor―and then his spectacular return to oil painting, around 2005, with a series of landscapes of the East Yorkshire countryside of his youth. These conversations provide an astonishing record of what has been Hockney's grand endeavor, nothing less than an exploration of "the structure of seeing" itself.
- GenresArtNonfictionBiography
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
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306 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Weschler
82 books123 followersLawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 14, 2013
I picked this up because it's the companion volume to Lawrence Weschler's classic "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees." Like that profile of artist Robert Irwin, these interviews with David Hockney are investigations into perception, how we view the world and how we represent it.
Throughout, Hockney makes a number of persuasive and provocative arguments: We still haven't grappled with the ramifications of cubism, that Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is more realistic than his earlier "Boy Leading a Horse," the widespread use of camera lucidas and mirrors shaped the aesthetic of Renaissance painting, the tyranny of one-point perspective runs counter to our natural way of processing visual information, the introduction of photography inspired modernist painting, photo collages invite us to look more deeply than single images, etc. In short, how our sense of space and vision is constantly mediated by technology, in myriad ways that we never recognize.
Weschler occasionally lets Hockney ramble on, but this earns the extra star simply for shifting my thinking about art. And I expect it'll continue to subtly reshape my viewing habits over the coming years. Highly recommended.
Throughout, Hockney makes a number of persuasive and provocative arguments: We still haven't grappled with the ramifications of cubism, that Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is more realistic than his earlier "Boy Leading a Horse," the widespread use of camera lucidas and mirrors shaped the aesthetic of Renaissance painting, the tyranny of one-point perspective runs counter to our natural way of processing visual information, the introduction of photography inspired modernist painting, photo collages invite us to look more deeply than single images, etc. In short, how our sense of space and vision is constantly mediated by technology, in myriad ways that we never recognize.
Weschler occasionally lets Hockney ramble on, but this earns the extra star simply for shifting my thinking about art. And I expect it'll continue to subtly reshape my viewing habits over the coming years. Highly recommended.
April 26, 2009
Since no one else has finished reading this yet (I mean, in the world of goodreads), I feel a little obligated to write something about it. Here's my review: this book is wonderful. I picked it up a few months after reading the new edition of Weschler's book on Robert Irwin - Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. Although the Hockney book is set up as a companion to the Irwin volume, I found it even more enjoyable and thought provoking. Not that they shouldn't be read together (both books definitely center around some of the same basic questions about perception and artistic representation) but the Hockney book is just more fun. The chapters on his foray into art history and the development of his theories about the influence of lenses and projection on early Renaissance painting read like detective fiction. I mean, ok, nerdy detective fiction, but still.
Here was the major difference for me between Seeing is Forgetting and True to Life. Following Irwin as an artist and a person made me want to sit back and contemplate a bit (it also made me want to drink a cold Coke - like, really bad). Overhearing Weschler's conversation with Hockney made me want to go and look and look and look at paintings. That's it.
Here was the major difference for me between Seeing is Forgetting and True to Life. Following Irwin as an artist and a person made me want to sit back and contemplate a bit (it also made me want to drink a cold Coke - like, really bad). Overhearing Weschler's conversation with Hockney made me want to go and look and look and look at paintings. That's it.
January 5, 2021
This is a great read for those who like Hockney's art and want to listen in on an incredible 25 year conversation about modern art. The book is a companion to "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," Weschler's decades-long conversation with the artist Robert Irwin. Both artists' careers are explorations of the meaning of cubism and they come at this from completely different directions. While Irwin's work is quite difficult to understand (because it is focused on performance or presence rather than product), Hockney is tremendously accessible and popular. His most recent works, the Yorkshire landscapes, positively radiate joy. He explains: "I guess basically I'm an optimistic person...I ultimately think we will move on to a higher awareness, that part of that road is our perceptions of the world as they change, and I see art as having an important role in that change." Weschler is an amazing interviewer and the book's conversations chronicle Hockney's investigations of photography and point of view which he explores in collages of photographs and his partnership with scientists regarding when and how artists began to use various lenses as aids in drawing, as well as documenting the artist's conversation as he is painting. The book is suffused with Hockney's zest for life and art and Weschler's curiosity about the relationship between the artist's mind, heart and hand. Every meeting between Hockney and Weschler usually begins with Hockney saying: "Wait til you see this!"
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November 27, 2023Good book on his very intriguing processes. Also useful to see how an artist's interest changes and progresses over time.
Later:
I have a bit more time now to add to this review. Without a lot of detail I will just mention that Hockney at one point was obsessed with the idea of the use of optical tools to make art (e.g. Vermeer but also other artists like Velasquez using the well-known camera obscura to project images on a canvas.) I certainly believe that Northern painters in particular were fascinated by what was possible to do with optical understanding, but whether they all used the camera obscura is in question. He doesn't mention Rembrandt, but I would never accept that Rembrandt used such tools.
Hockney also talks about a later tool, the camera lucida, which is a prism arranged to project an image on a piece of paper or other medium, held in the lap or on a table. He believes that the great draftsman Ingres used this tool and does considerable experimenting in trying it out himself. His results are delightful, but they still look like Hockneys! When he was in search of the device he couldn't buy one for less than $2000! Now you can buy one online for about $60. I am tempted to get one just to see what I can see (pun intended) BUT Hockney implies something about the impossibility of getting the kind of likeness Ingres did withOUT a tool. I strongly disagree with that. I think some people simply have a talent for "taking a likeness," as he says--I have a pretty good talent for this, myself--and it's kind of shocking that he'd proclaim it as not likely to be possible!
Hockney goes back and forth on these declamations, though, and goes back to less intermediated ways of work by the time the book comes to an end. It's a fascinating account of a man with a relentless and admirable curiosity, and in general, very illuminating as to his own process.
Later:
I have a bit more time now to add to this review. Without a lot of detail I will just mention that Hockney at one point was obsessed with the idea of the use of optical tools to make art (e.g. Vermeer but also other artists like Velasquez using the well-known camera obscura to project images on a canvas.) I certainly believe that Northern painters in particular were fascinated by what was possible to do with optical understanding, but whether they all used the camera obscura is in question. He doesn't mention Rembrandt, but I would never accept that Rembrandt used such tools.
Hockney also talks about a later tool, the camera lucida, which is a prism arranged to project an image on a piece of paper or other medium, held in the lap or on a table. He believes that the great draftsman Ingres used this tool and does considerable experimenting in trying it out himself. His results are delightful, but they still look like Hockneys! When he was in search of the device he couldn't buy one for less than $2000! Now you can buy one online for about $60. I am tempted to get one just to see what I can see (pun intended) BUT Hockney implies something about the impossibility of getting the kind of likeness Ingres did withOUT a tool. I strongly disagree with that. I think some people simply have a talent for "taking a likeness," as he says--I have a pretty good talent for this, myself--and it's kind of shocking that he'd proclaim it as not likely to be possible!
Hockney goes back and forth on these declamations, though, and goes back to less intermediated ways of work by the time the book comes to an end. It's a fascinating account of a man with a relentless and admirable curiosity, and in general, very illuminating as to his own process.
September 10, 2025
Someone I know recently referred to Hockney as a “hack” artist. But, this book only exemplified the falsehood in that claim. I bought this book years ago without ever reading it, but held on to it nonetheless. And I’m glad I did.
At some points, it felt like a slow read, but in general I thoroughly enjoyed diving into Hockney’s world. It was slow in the way his careful and methodical approach to art making is and I have much admiration for that. I learned not only about Hockney but about art on a larger scale, making for a great read.
At some points, it felt like a slow read, but in general I thoroughly enjoyed diving into Hockney’s world. It was slow in the way his careful and methodical approach to art making is and I have much admiration for that. I learned not only about Hockney but about art on a larger scale, making for a great read.
June 20, 2019
So I have officially decided that I will happily read anything Lawrence Weschler writes. This is a fascinating portrait of David Hockney covering his work, process, and character. I loved how Weschler depicted the ever present OBSESSION in Hockney's practice from taking hundreds and hundreds of Polaroid photos to deep diving into the history of painting to prove a hypothesis. Hockney's passion is simultaneously admirable and endearing. Also his work is so FUN it makes me :-). I'm going to see a film about him this weekend and I'm so so excited. Spoiler alert: the best parts imo below:
"You musn't overinterpret comments. It's not that I despised photography everc, it’s just that I’ve always distrusted the claims that were made on its behalf—claims as to its greater reality or authenticity” (Hockney, 3).
“joiners”: spliced prints together, effecting the closest possible overlap.
Indeed, that’s what this collage finally looked most like—the experience of looking as it transpires across time (10).
how we actually see, which is to say, not all at once but rather in discrete, separate glimpses, which we then build upon into our continuous experience of the world (10).
“Relative importance, not accuracy, was why I was trying to convey” (Hockney, 14).
“The camera is a medium is what I suddenly realized ... it is neither an art, a technique, a craft, nor a hobby—it’s a tool” (Hockney, 14).
vision consists of a continuous accumulation of details perceived across time and synthesized into a large, continuously metamorphosing whole (20).
interest-ing: it is the continual projection of interest (21).
“Everything in our culture seems to reinforce the instinct to see rectangularly—books, streets, buildings, rooms, windows” (30).
his explorations into the artistic possibilities of copying machines (53) (( kind of reminiscent of coding!).
The beauty of the surface itself (56).
“There’s a wonderful quote of Picasso’s, which I keep referring to, where he says he never made a painting as a work of art; it was always research and it was always about time” (61).
vanishing point!
“when people said I was wasting my time, I could care less. What I was learning was amazing to me” (65).
children draw everything in the same drawing (78).
Re Pearblossom Highway: “No, here you don’t feel you need to walk into it because you’re already in it” (81).
the tyranny of vanishing point perspective (105).
reverse perspective brings both the distance back close up close to you ... it affords a sense of motion, of liveliness (106).
I'm trying to convey the experience of space (112).
Hockey realizing painters like Caravaggio must have used some optics device and becomes OBSESSED with proving this theory (126).
When photography came onto the scene Delaroche declared "painting is dead" (127).
... painting was forced to find new purpose beyond the lens based technique ...
In old portraits, Hockney would notice that the scale of certain elements in relation to each other was off and that some objects were much too detailed than the eye could have accounted for at a certain distance. Actually this all started because Hockney realized that one if Ingres' lines (I think) was so definitive like Andy Warhol who used a projector (117).
Summary of his optical hypothesis (180).
Rather vision as it is lived involved a stereoscopic vantage in continual motion, with the perceiving mind actively engaged in retrieving memory, projecting expectation, computing relative scales, compensating for seeming discrepancies, and so forth (181).
But the [optical] devices established a standard, they dictated a look (183).
Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso, artists who through great struggle threw off the cyclopean way of seeing and began looking at the world with two eyes, from a more realistically moving and lively vantage (184).
In a fax from Hockney: "'The pencil of nature' [as the new medium of photography was being referred to the 1840s is a mad idea: you need a hand with a pencil. It won't do anything on its own" (187).
The Chinese in Rembrandt's time we're not yet hostage you the Western optical hegemony (191).
European trope of canvas as window (194).
Rebecca Solnit cites new technologies as "annihilating time and space" (219).
Responding to there are no figures in landscapes Hockney says: "Ah, but you the viewer are the figure in them" (222).
"You musn't overinterpret comments. It's not that I despised photography everc, it’s just that I’ve always distrusted the claims that were made on its behalf—claims as to its greater reality or authenticity” (Hockney, 3).
“joiners”: spliced prints together, effecting the closest possible overlap.
Indeed, that’s what this collage finally looked most like—the experience of looking as it transpires across time (10).
how we actually see, which is to say, not all at once but rather in discrete, separate glimpses, which we then build upon into our continuous experience of the world (10).
“Relative importance, not accuracy, was why I was trying to convey” (Hockney, 14).
“The camera is a medium is what I suddenly realized ... it is neither an art, a technique, a craft, nor a hobby—it’s a tool” (Hockney, 14).
vision consists of a continuous accumulation of details perceived across time and synthesized into a large, continuously metamorphosing whole (20).
interest-ing: it is the continual projection of interest (21).
“Everything in our culture seems to reinforce the instinct to see rectangularly—books, streets, buildings, rooms, windows” (30).
his explorations into the artistic possibilities of copying machines (53) (( kind of reminiscent of coding!).
The beauty of the surface itself (56).
“There’s a wonderful quote of Picasso’s, which I keep referring to, where he says he never made a painting as a work of art; it was always research and it was always about time” (61).
vanishing point!
“when people said I was wasting my time, I could care less. What I was learning was amazing to me” (65).
children draw everything in the same drawing (78).
Re Pearblossom Highway: “No, here you don’t feel you need to walk into it because you’re already in it” (81).
the tyranny of vanishing point perspective (105).
reverse perspective brings both the distance back close up close to you ... it affords a sense of motion, of liveliness (106).
I'm trying to convey the experience of space (112).
Hockey realizing painters like Caravaggio must have used some optics device and becomes OBSESSED with proving this theory (126).
When photography came onto the scene Delaroche declared "painting is dead" (127).
... painting was forced to find new purpose beyond the lens based technique ...
In old portraits, Hockney would notice that the scale of certain elements in relation to each other was off and that some objects were much too detailed than the eye could have accounted for at a certain distance. Actually this all started because Hockney realized that one if Ingres' lines (I think) was so definitive like Andy Warhol who used a projector (117).
Summary of his optical hypothesis (180).
Rather vision as it is lived involved a stereoscopic vantage in continual motion, with the perceiving mind actively engaged in retrieving memory, projecting expectation, computing relative scales, compensating for seeming discrepancies, and so forth (181).
But the [optical] devices established a standard, they dictated a look (183).
Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso, artists who through great struggle threw off the cyclopean way of seeing and began looking at the world with two eyes, from a more realistically moving and lively vantage (184).
In a fax from Hockney: "'The pencil of nature' [as the new medium of photography was being referred to the 1840s is a mad idea: you need a hand with a pencil. It won't do anything on its own" (187).
The Chinese in Rembrandt's time we're not yet hostage you the Western optical hegemony (191).
European trope of canvas as window (194).
Rebecca Solnit cites new technologies as "annihilating time and space" (219).
Responding to there are no figures in landscapes Hockney says: "Ah, but you the viewer are the figure in them" (222).
November 10, 2024
Art history enthusiasts will love this. I will never look at a painting (or at anything!) the same way again. And I'm so grateful the paintings and photographs referenced were included in the book!!! I highly recommend visiting your local used bookstore and picking up something on a whim... that led me to this and I'm so happy it did
April 15, 2022
(see review of “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees)
May 29, 2025
A great collection of essays detailing Hockney’s artistic explorations.
September 15, 2009
Lawrence Weschler has produced two of the best books about artists ever.
This one, about Robert Irwin, is a set of essays based on conversations Weschler had on and off with Irwin over the past 30 years, and the two of them make a wonderful intellectual match.
This new edition issued in 2008 includes lots of color photos (which Irwin didn't permit when the '82 edition came out) and six new chapters.
(The other book is Weschler's "True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney.")
This one, about Robert Irwin, is a set of essays based on conversations Weschler had on and off with Irwin over the past 30 years, and the two of them make a wonderful intellectual match.
This new edition issued in 2008 includes lots of color photos (which Irwin didn't permit when the '82 edition came out) and six new chapters.
(The other book is Weschler's "True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney.")
December 7, 2009
Absolutely the best book of art writing that I've read. Fantastic, straightforward but not simple, train of conscientious, aesthetic logic that chugs along nicely with artist's continual visual breakthroughs in what must be the best model of career development I've ever come across. The enthusiasm and wit of the writer delivers Hockney's insatiable and progressive 'seeing' in a way which opens the readers mind not only to the artist's discoveries but to their own re-discovery of this steady and brilliant master.
April 3, 2011
few can equal weschler - a writer who understands and explains fluently and gracefully
ultimately this is about hockney and his utterly amazing evolution as an artist, a tireless experimenter, an intelligent, interesting and vivacious human being.
a completely absorbing book about seeing and art - it gave me a deeper understanding of what has always bothered me about photography as art and forever changed how i understand the visual arts, painting, cubism, one point perspective.
ultimately this is about hockney and his utterly amazing evolution as an artist, a tireless experimenter, an intelligent, interesting and vivacious human being.
a completely absorbing book about seeing and art - it gave me a deeper understanding of what has always bothered me about photography as art and forever changed how i understand the visual arts, painting, cubism, one point perspective.
February 3, 2013
My absolute favourite living artist. Hockney not only is a brilliant artist, it is his intelligence and provocative thinking that is so interesting as provided in these conversations with the author. Loved it.
August 27, 2015
Lawrence Weschler! Is so good!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews