A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen

David Hockney & Martin Gayford

Hardcover | 21.59 x 3.81 x 27.94 cm | 360 pp

Abrams | 2016 | 9781419722752

Informed and energised by a lifetime of painting, drawing and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with the art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? How do you show movement in a still picture, and how, conversely, do films and television connect with old masters?

Juxtaposing a rich variety of images – a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velázquez painting – the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and make unexpected connections across time and media. Building on Hockney’s groundbreaking book Secret Knowledge, they argue that film, photography, painting and drawing are deeply interconnected. Insightful and thought provoking, A History of Pictures is an important contribution to our appreciation of how we represent our reality. 

Table of Contents

1. Pictures, Art and History
2. Pictures and Reality
3. Making Marks
4. Shadows
5. Picturing Space and Time
6. Brunelleschi’s Window and Alberti’s Mirror
7. Mirrors and Reflections
8. Paper, Paint and Multiplying Pictures
9. Painting the Stage and Staging Paintings
10. Caravaggio and the Academy of the Lynx-Eyed
11. Vermeer and Rembrandt: the Hand, the Lens and the Heart
12. Truth and Beauty in the Age of Reason
13. The Camera Before and After 1839
14. Photography, Truth and Painting
15. Painting with and without Photography
16. Snapshots and Moving Pictures
17. Movies and Stills
18. The Unending History of Pictures