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A widow (Rachel Dratch) goes to a dominatrix class.

Winner: Special Jury Mention for Comedy - Aspen Shortsfest, Best Live Action Short - Lower East Side Film Festival, Best of the Month - Short of the Week

Official Selection: Palm Springs Shortfest, New Orleans Film Festival, Indie Memphis Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival

Starring Rachel Dratch & Henry Ayres-Brown
Written and Directed by Julia Kennelly

Produced by Julia Kennelly, Karine Benzaria, Will Mayo, Chandler Raub, Erica Rose, Bits Sola, and Tyler Ben-Amotz
Executive Producer: Christina D. King
Casting by Andrew Femenella

Director of Photography: Daisy Zhou
Edited by Will Mayo
Production Design by Christina O'Neil
Composer Zach Rosenberg

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Two drunk friends accidentally walk into a crime scene.

Hot and Tasty is my graduation film from The Royal College of Art (2019)

Directed and animated by Laura Jayne Hodkin
Sound design and music by Jarrah Hewes 
Script by Laura Jayne Hodkin, Simona Mehandzhieva
Colouring assistance by Sanjana Chandrasekhar, Carwyn Leung, Simona Mehandzhieva
Voice actors: Anna Chloe Moorey, Emmy Rose 

Supported by Passion Pictures



♡FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS♡

Pictoplasma, in isolation, 2020
Loudon Arts Film Festival, 2020 *Best Student Short
Fest Anča, Žilina, 2020
Calgary Underground Film Festival, Calgary, 2020
Emergence Festival, Los Angeles, 2020
13th British Shorts Film Festival, Berlin, 2020
Slamdance Film Festival, Utah, 2020
London Short Film Festival, London 2020 *Random Acts Award Winner 2020
Anima, Brussels, 2020
BFI London Film Festival, London 2019
Manchester Animation Festival, Manchester 2019
London International Animation Festival, London 2019
Funny Looking, Comedy Night, London, 2019
Malt Adult #15, Ohio, 2019
Cardiff Animation Nights, Cardiff 2019 
Spark Animation *Runner up 2D student film Vancouver 2019
Cartoons Underground, Singapore 2019
15 Short Film Festival, North Carolina 2019
Gojo Short Animation Gallery, Kyoto 2019
Up Close and Personal with Mister Tibbs, London 2019
Short of the Week, official premiere

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Quelque part du côté de la salle des fêtes de Brétigny-sur-Bizet, devant un public déchaîné s’affrontent des chiens aux talents plus exceptionnels les uns que les autres. Face à eux, Choupette, encouragée par son meilleur et bruyant public. 


Somewhere near the hall of Brétigny-sur-Bizet, in front of a raging crowd, the most outstanding dogs face each other to measure their talents and strengths. Among them is Sweetheart, encouraged by the best and most noisy crowd. Will he triumph in this hard competition?

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“If the cuckoo don’t crow, then you know there’s wind coming…” Brian from Melton recounts how his mother, Doris, was the woman who predicted the October 1987 hurricane and famously phoned the BBC, but was told not to be so daft.

Story as told by Brian from Melton to Nick Pandolfi

www.stevekirby.co.uk
www.nicholaspandolfi.co.uk
twitter.com/BrianFromMelton

The Smalls Film Festival 2015 
Cambridge Film Festival 2015
Encounters Short Film & Animation Festival 2015
DepicT 2015: British Special Mention Award
Kinofest Bucharest 2015
Heart of Gold International Short Film Festival 2015
DOK Leipzig 2015
Promax Short Film Festival 2015 - Winner
Interfilm Berlin 2015
Crystal Palace International Film Festival 2015
Interfilm Berlin 2015
Manchester Animation Festival – Out Of Competition
Tallinn Black Nights – Out Of Competition
Croydon International Film Festival 2015
London International Animation Festival 2015
Animateka Slovenia 2015
London Short Film Festival 2016
British Shorts Berlin 2016
Anima Festival Brussles 2016
Monstra Animation Festival Lisbon 2016
Fargo Film Festival Minnesota 2016
Toronto Animation Arts Festival 2016
London Comedy Film Festival 2016

http://www.lostateminor.com/2016/02/10/steve-kirby-talks-to-us-about-his-first-independent-short/

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Set in 17th century London, Sexing the Cherry is about the journeys of a mother, known as The Dog Woman, and her protégé, Jordan. They journey in a space-time flux: across the seas to find exotic fruits such as bananas and pineapples; and across time, with glimpses of "the present" and references to Charles I of England and Oliver Cromwell. The mother's physical appearance is somewhat "grotesque". She is a giant, wrapped in a skirt big enough to serve as a ship's sail and strong enough to fling an elephant. She is also hideous, with smallpox scars in which fleas live, a flat nose and foul teeth. Her son, however, is proud of her, as no other mother can hold a good dozen oranges in her mouth all at once. Ultimately, their journey is a journey in search of The Self.[citation needed ]

Sexing the Cherry is a postmodernist work and features many examples of intertextuality. It also incorporates the fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Within the novel, Jeanette Winterson utilizes the individual stories of " The Twelve Dancing Princesses" in order to make a statement about the usual, subversive nature of femininity in a patriarchal society. In this reclaimed story, the author chooses to give the women princesses a voice of determination, one that undercuts the nature of the usual fairy tale story ending. In each of the stories that the princesses tell, the male figure is oppressive, dominating, foul, and overall a burden to the women. In turn, the women decide to run away with secret lovers, or to kill their respective husbands in order to live a better life. Through the use of this story, Winterson achieves further contrast to the main characters' story lines given that Jordan is in search of a meaningful link between himself and the gender roles offered in society while Dog Woman is consistently portrayed as a highly masculine character with larger than life qualities that set her apart from the standards of femininity according to societal norms. The narrative of the story exists outside of time, further emphasising the timeless nature of normative gender identities.

Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry has been argued to be an important historiographical novel for women; this novel considers women's role, prominence, or lack of prominence in society within historical fiction. Jeffrey Roessner argues: "The focus of feminist historiographers has steadily shifted from recovering the neglected past experience of women to historicizing the patriarchal values that helped produce such experience." In addition to voicing her concern with the hierarchical structures in society, within her novel Winterson encourages readers to think about sex dichotomies as a thing of the past. With her main characters of Dog Woman and Jordan she achieves a contrasting of the sexes that has been taken into consideration multiple times by scholarly articles such as Roessner's. When considering these two main characters within the novel as a historiography and the context they are put into, what is important to remember is that: "Ultimately...Winterson rejects linear temporality and endorses an apocalyptic urge to escape history and the power structures of a male-dominated society."

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Set in 17th century London, Sexing the Cherry is about the journeys of a mother, known as The Dog Woman, and her protégé, Jordan. They journey in a space-time flux: across the seas to find exotic fruits such as bananas and pineapples; and across time, with glimpses of "the present" and references to Charles I of England and Oliver Cromwell.

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Favorite short films from vimeo...

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Because they are delightful or dark and fascinating...

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Because they are delightful or dark and fascinating...

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On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection

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Miniature books, eighteenth-century novels, Tom Thumb weddings, tall tales, and objects of tourism and nostalgia: this diverse group of cultural forms is the su

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Well-meaning laments about violence in the media usually leave me wanting to bash someone upside the head with a tire iron. To begin with, the reformist spirit is invariably aimed down the rungs of cultural idioms, at cartoons, slasher films, pornography, rap music and video games, while the carnage and bloodletting in Shakespeare, Goya and the Bible get a pass. Low-culture violence is literal, while high-culture violence is symbolic or allegorical and subject to critical interpretation. Low-culture violence coarsens us, high-culture violence edifies us. And the lower the cultural form, or the ticket price, or - let's just say it - the presumed education level of the typical viewer, the more depictions of violence are suspected of inducing mindless emulation in their audiences, who will soon re-enact the mayhem like morally challenged monkeys, unlike the viewers of, say, "Titus Andronicus," about whose moral intelligence society is confident.

Maggie Nelson has her laments about violent representations, but in "The Art of Cruelty" she refreshingly aims them largely up the cultural ladder, at the fine arts, literature, theater - even poetry. What interests her is the "full-fledged assault on the barriers between art and life that much 20th-century art worked so hard to perform," often by enlisting violence and cruelty, simulated or actual, including cruelties inflicted physically on the person of the artist, or affectively on the psyches of the audience.

Image

Chris Burden's "Trans-fixed" (1974). Credit... Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery; photograph by Charles Hill

Of course, the aesthetic program of cultural modernism has long been summed up by the maxim épater la bourgeoisie. Rather than taking this directive for granted, Nelson delves into the varieties of cruelty perpetrated on us bourgeois for our supposed betterment, what the art critic Grant Kester has called the "orthopedic aesthetic." The art of cruelty aestheticizes violence, in not necessarily scrupulous ways. It can be reckless and scattershot, provoked by the desire to make others feel as bad as the sufferers of injustice and trauma whose experiences are vicariously borrowed by artists shopping for shocks. It bludgeons audiences into getting the point. It's responsible for a century of art-world Nurse Ratcheds, wielding jolts of aesthetic electroshock therapy and taking unseemly pleasure at rubbing people's noses in pain.

This is an important and frequently surprising book. By reframing the history of the avant-garde in terms of cruelty, and contesting the smugness and didacticism of artist-clinicians like the notorious Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch and other heirs of Sade and Artaud, Nelson is taking on modernism's (and postmodernism's) most cherished tenets. After all, aesthetic shock has underwritten most of our cultural innovation for over a century. So this book could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics, one that, Nelson imagines, "might deliver us . . . to a more sensitive, perceptive, insightful, enlivened, collaborative and just way of inhabiting the earth."

But not so fast with the world-improvement plans. Nelson's punning title reflects a certain duality in her thinking: the dance of indictment is entwined with large doses of appreciation, not to say fascination, with the art of cruelty. She objects to its messianic impulses while being addicted to its frissons; though worried about art that perpetuates the cycle of violence, she's captivated by the brutality of artists like Francis Bacon, a touchstone for the book. She keeps coming back to him as if to an art-world bad boyfriend, circling his oeuvre, obsessing and remonstrating - he amplifies pain unnecessarily, he courts and exalts it - before finally renouncing him over his collages of Algerian body parts, the last straw in their relationship. Except this provides the opportunity to extol Warhol's car crash and electric chair images instead, because they're "clean and clear - without pretension, without existential apparatus."

An invitation card for Gina Pane's exhibition "Azione Teorica," in 1977 Credit... Courtesy of the collection of Christoph Schifferli, Zurich

Nelson's opinions can be quirky and hard to square with one another, but they never fail to be interesting, quite some accomplishment in what could have been a free-form ramble through the mires of someone else's aesthetic preoccupations. And to say she's contradictory is not a criticism: how exactly should we deal with the knowledge that something ethically squalid can also be exciting?

Hopping like a jackrabbit between genres and media, including forays into the swamps of pop culture, Nelson is strongest when at her most rageful, writing with controlled fury at the anti-intellectualism and crassness of the present. She has no time for fake populism, she's an unabashed cultural elitist: withering about reality TV, Lars von Trier and the middlebrow brutality dispenser Neil LaBute (whose plays she calls "sophomoric" and "weak-minded"). She employs herself as a registering instrument, constantly taking her aesthetic temperature: "I felt angry. Then I felt disgusted. Finally, I felt bored." These reports have a phenomenological brio, laced with physiological detail. She recalls "a kind of vibrating memory of the unnerving psychic state" induced by the video art of Ryan Trecartin. About a Yoko Ono piece, she writes: "I long to see Ono's clothes fall, to see her breasts bared. Yet I also feel a mounting sense of alarm, empathy and injustice in watching her body be made vulnerable." She likes art that makes her morally uncomfortable, and from the laudatory way she quotes Kafka - "What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune" - I assume she wishes to induce the same state in her readers.

Often she does, moving at breakneck speed from real-life political violence to the images of such violence (including those on human rights Web sites), to real violence in performance art (Chris Burden asking a friend to shoot him; Marina Abramovic inviting viewers to injure her), to the violent impulses of artists like Bacon. Occasionally I felt an urge to protest these rather balletic leaps, but Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that I finally just sat back and enjoyed the show. Along with her subjects, Nelson is constantly attenuating the art-life distinction, steering us, for example, from the cruelty of the artist Ana Mendieta's blood-spilling installations to an actual shooting spree by a female college professor, then pausing mid-jeté to deliver a figurative kneecapping to male critics who regard such instances of female violence as a perverse index of gender equality.

Andy Warhol's "Five Deaths," circa 1963. Credit... Andy Warhol Foundation/Art Resource, NY

Nelson understands that what makes violence so absorbing, as subject and spectacle, is the impossibility of separating what's "out there" from what's "in here," and her distinction-blurring trains of association model the problem. Most of us, as she points out, have "wily reserves of malice, power-mongering, self-centeredness, fear, sadism or simple meanness of spirit." We do occasionally feel the urge to injure and destroy.

Nelson is no reformist - in fact, she's wonderfully fearless when it comes to belittling the well meaning, as critical of the "idiot compassion" of social justice seekers (too often patronizing and ineffectual) as she is of the misogynist gore in exploitation films. She suspects that the human condition is suffering. The best art dramatizes what happens when ethical impulses collide with the monsters within, but these enactments themselves leave behind a nasty residue.

What do we do with this violent surplus? It's a question that haunts the book. What's not mentioned is that Nelson has written two previous books, a memoir and a poetry-prose collection, about an instance of violence in her own family history: the 1969 murder of an aunt she'd never met, her mother's younger sister. So Nelson has been a practitioner of the art of cruelty, too, transforming violence into a métier. It's exactly these unsaids, the unmastered fascinations being worked out on the page, that make this book so unpredictable and original.

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Why Is Contemporary Art Addicted to Violence? (Published 2011)

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Well-meaning laments about violence in the media usually leave me wanting to bash someone upside the head with a tire iron. To begin with, the reformist spirit is invariably aimed down the rungs of cultural idioms, at cartoons, slasher films, pornography, rap music and video games, while the carnage and bloodletting in Shakespeare, Goya and the Bible get a pass.

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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Juxtaposing animated video footage with stop-motion puppetry, Emily & Ariel bring you into their lives on an average Friday night.

OFFICIAL SELECTION:
New Orleans Film Festival, New Orleans, LA, 2016 
LA Film Festival, Los Angeles CA, 2016 
Best Experimental Short Film -- Evolution International Film Festival, Mallorca, Spain 2016
Motion Commotion @ ICON9, Austin, TX 2016
Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, Mammoth Lakes, CA, 2016 
Tricky Women Animation Festival, Vienna, Austria, 2016
Post Alley Film Festival, Seattle, WA, 2015
California Women's Film Festival, Sherman Oaks, CA, 2015

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What would you do with 8 Ikea boxes, 5 cereal boxes, 18 LED torches, 47 batteries, 2 cameras and 900 hours?

Many of us would be stumped with a question like that but the team at The Lume decided to take 2500 photos of 450 cardboard cut-outs in an effort to simultaneously build something beautiful and creative while helping to bring resources to those in need. They devoted a lot of meticulous work and creative energy in making a 60 second stop-motion video to promote the work of local charity Heart for the Homeless.

You can find a behind the scenes here! https://vimeo.com/81143990

To support the awareness around the launch of ‘It’s Your Move’, the team at Heart for the Homeless approached John Cavallaro and the creative minds at The Lume to help construct a 60-second stop-animation video, titled “Cardboard City: It’s Your Move”.

“It was a great learning curve for us as we had never done stop-motion or built a miniature set before,” said Mr Cavallaro.

“I sought the advice of several of the world’s leading stop motion animators who had worked on movies like Caroline, and the new Lego movie. Most of the time we felt like big kids playing with toys.” According to Mr Cavallaro, the team at The Lume got behind the idea because they believed in the Heart for the Homeless cause.

“When I met with Leighton and heard about his cause, I loved the idea,” remarked Mr Cavallaro.

“The simplicity of the idea and authenticity of all involved is inspiring and I hope that it continues its rapid growth across Australia.”

“Ideally, I would love to really see this charity become recognised in the public consciousness,” said Mr Cavallaro.

To find out more about the services of Heart For The Homeless, visit bit.ly/1mCSUvK

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Original Title: "Legal Smuggling with Laurie Lindeen"
Life's a drag for singer/songwriter, Laurie Lindeen of Zuzu's Petals. She works at Al's Breakfast. One early morning she discovers success means taking high-profile tabloid interviews from the back corner of the greasy spoon diner's kitchen.

Lived by, written by, and told by Laurie Lindeen | Directed, produced, and animated by Lewie & Noah Kloster | Director of photography Katelyn Rebelo | Sound design by David Britton | Colorist Samuel Gursky (Irving Harvey) | Miniature Puppeteers Max Baez, Brad Bailey, Gary Bardizbanian, Colton Smrz, Jack Wedge, Emilie Wilde | Thanks Joyce Lanxin Zhao

SCREENINGS AND AWARDS
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival 2019 Audience Award Winner
Florida Film Festival 2019 Official Selection
Twin Cities Film Festival 2019 Official Selection
Video Consortium 2018 Screening
San Francisco International Festival of Shorts 2018

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Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings

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No one on the planet has drawn more than Laurie Lipton. With millions of tiny strokes of her humble pencil, Laurie’s haunted images seek answers to some of the most uncomfortable themes in our culture. But what compels her to live a life of isolation drawing is neither black nor white.

Love Bite is this week's Staff Pick Premiere. Read more about it on the Vimeo Blog: https://vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-love-bite-by-james-scott/

Directed, Edited & Filmed by James Scott
Featuring Laurie Lipton, Terry Gilliam
www.facebook.com/laurieliptonart
www.laurielipton.com
@laurielipton

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Bryan Zanisnik's Big Pivot | Art21 "New York Close Up"

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What’s your favorite Swedish pastry?

Recently returning to New York City after several years of living in Sweden, artist and storyteller Bryan Zanisnik comically chronicles the highs and lows of life as a contemporary artist, discovering a love for mushroom foraging and the pleasures of inner stillness along the way. 

After more than ten years in New York, the artist is both exhilarated and exhausted—exhilarated by the high visibility exhibition opportunities, but ultimately exhausted by the chronic under-funding and his own labor-intensive process. Describing his mix of photography, sculpture, and performance, Zanisnik explains “I would do projects where I would collect thousands of objects, I would arrange them, photograph them, move them, [and] build an installation.” But the process was bringing diminishing personal returns, prompting the artist to ask, “Do we make our lives more difficult than they have to be?”

The solution? Zanisnik pivots and moves to Sweden—spurred on by his partner’s new job there—dreaming of universal health care and government artist support. But the artist soon discovers that Sweden is not quite the promised land he expected and learns that the road to personal and professional fulfilment is not always a straight one. Mirroring Zanisnik’s own tragic-comic style with a playful use of sound effects and archival footage, this portrait is a universal story of one person’s quest for financial stability, creative joy, and the best in Swedish pastry.   

Bryan Zanisnik (b. 1979, Union, New Jersey, USA) lives and works in Queens, New York. Learn more about the artist at: https://art21.org/artist/bryan-zanisnik/

CREDITS | "New York Close Up" Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Director: Nick Ravich. Editor: Misha Spivack. Additional Editor: Nadine Mundo. Cinematography: Jarred Alterman. Additional Camera: Logan Quarles and Brian Wengrofsky. Grip & Assistant Camera: Danny Flanagan and George Schramm. Sound: Trokon Ngabe and Jeff Seelye. Production Assistants: Meghan Garven and John Wesley Wilson. Color Correction: Chris Ramey. Sound Design & Mix: Gisela Fullà-Silvestre. Design & Graphics: Andy Cahill and Chips. DIT & Assistant Editor: Jasmine Cannon. Music: Robert Carlton. Artwork Courtesy: Bryan Zanisnik. Thanks: Brooklyn Roasting Company, Cut + Measure, George Gerswhin, Anna Kaschel, Kimia Kline, Alex Laviola, Emma Nordin, Red Hook Post, Prelinger Archives, Melissa Saenz Gordon, Rafael Salazar, Ava Wiland, Aaron Young, YouTube Space NY, and Tamar Zohara Ettun.  © Art21, Inc. 2020. All rights reserved.

"New York Close Up" is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; and, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by individual contributors.

#BryanZanisnik #Art21 #Art21NewYorkCloseUp

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By day, she visits morgues, observes autopsies, and studies pictures of crime scenes. By night, she turns nightmarish imaginings into precise, red-splattered miniatures.

Meet Abigail Goldman.


Directed by Kevin Staake

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Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to contemporary art through the production of documentary films, resources, and public programs.

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William Kentridge Interview: How We Make Sense of the World

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William Kentridge: Pain & Sympathy | Art21 "Extended Play"

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In conjunction with The Drawings of Rube Goldberg, the Albright-Knox exhibited a selection of lithographs by French artist Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879). Daumier was both a prolific artist and devoted humanist. At a time when France was continually enmeshed in political turmoil, Daumier thrived in an underground society of "bohemian" artists who questioned political and social mores in nineteenth-century Paris. Although Daumier was first and foremost a painter and sculptor, the bulk of his lifetime income came from his highly popular caricatures published in weekly French journals such as La Caricature and La Charivari. Images of corrupt politicians, judges, swindlers, dubious rascals, and human folly in general, echo Daumier's humanist viewpoint and his strong social conscience. The images that were on view, an excellent sampling of Daumier's satirical eye, are unique historical documents that reflect the amusements, costume, demeanor, and politics of fin-de-siècle Parisian life. This exhibition included 33 images culled from the museum's extensive collection of works on paper.
This exhibition was organized by Curatorial Assistant Holly E. Hughes.

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An Eye for Satire: The Lithographs of Honoré-Victorin Daumier

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In conjunction with The Drawings of Rube Goldberg, the Albright-Knox exhibited a selection of lithographs by French artist Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879). Daumier was both a prolific artist and devoted humanist. At a time when France was continually enmeshed in political turmoil, Daumier thrived in an underground society of "bohemian" artists who questioned political and social mores in nineteenth-century Paris.

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Technique and condition

The following entry discusses eleven drawings by Paula Rego, -.

Pen and ink drawing on machine-made white cartridge paper. The perforated left side edge of eight of the drawings (T05538-, , T05548) indicates that the sheets were torn out of a spiral bound sketch book, the other three sheets (, , ) have been trimmed. Each drawing has been individually numbered in pencil on the verso in the top left corner.

The images have been drawn in pen and brush, with ink washes of mainly one or two shades of brown and a few splashes of diluted black in the sky and shadows. The support is slightly buckled where the ink washes have been applied.

On acquisition the drawings were mounted onto white conservation board attached by Japanese paper hinges. At the artist's request, the mounts were made to overlap slightly the edges of the drawings to hide the perforated left edge. They were then framed in simple L-section frames.

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'Drawing for 'The Dance'', Paula Rego, 1988 | Tate

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The following entry discusses eleven drawings by Paula Rego, -. Pen and ink drawing on machine-made white cartridge paper. The perforated left side edge of eight of the drawings (T05538-, , T05548) indicates that the sheets were torn out of a spiral bound sketch book, the other three sheets (, , ) have been trimmed.

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Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People

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Paula Rego - 'Just draw, just draw' (12/51)

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David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.

From his portraits and images of Los Angeles swimming pools, through to his photography and Yorkshire landscapes, Hockney's style continues to change. As the artist approaches his eightieth birthday, we explore the themes of Hockney's work and his various ways of working.

Early life

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1937, David Hockney decided to pursue a career as an artist at a young age. In 1953 he joined Bradford School of Art, where he received a traditional training based on drawing from life and produced figure studies, portraits and cityscapes. Hockney found art school a liberating experience, explaining:

I was interested in everything at first [...] It was thrilling after being at the Grammar School, to be at a school where I knew I would enjoy everything they asked me to do. I loved it all and I used to spend twelve hours a day in the art school. For four years I spent twelve hours a day there every day

Created while an art student, Woman with a Sewing Machine 1954 is one of Hockney's earliest prints and shows his mother, Laura Hockney as his model. Hockney would go on to portray her numerous times and in a range of mediums.

Art School

In 1959 Hockney began his studies at the Royal College of Art, London, where he met artists including Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Patrick Caulfield.

Hockney's early graphic works laid the foundations for his artistic career. Much of this work is autobiographical and alludes to the artist's sexuality. However, because homosexuality was not decriminalised in Britain until 1967, these references are often subtle (such this work's use of the gay slang term 'queen').

This charcoal drawing was created in preparation for one of Hockney's major early paintings Doll Boy 1960. The naïve and unpolished style has qualities of outsider art, particularly the work of Jean Dubuffet, whom Hockney admired stating 'it was his style of doing images, the kind of childish drawings he used that attracted me'. Hockney idolised the pop singer Cliff Richard, often featuring him in his work at this time. The title Doll Boytakes inspiration from the song Living Doll popularised by Richard. As Hockney comments:

Doll Boy was a reference to the pop singer Cliff Richard, who was very attractive, very sexy. [...] I used to cut out photographs of him from newspapers and magazines and stick them up around my little cubicle in the Royal College of Art, partly because other people used to stick up girl pin-ups, and I thought, I'm not going to do that, can't do that, and here's something just as sexy

A Rake's Progress

On returning from his first trip to New York in 1961, Hockney began sixteen etchings for A Rake's Progress 1961-3,inspired by William Hogarth's series of the same name painted in 1735.

Hockney's series of etchings depict a journey of self-discovery, in which a young artist and gay man struggles to find his way in 1960s New York. Although Hockney uses his own experiences to inform the graphic tale, he states 'it is not really me. It's just that I use myself as a model because I'm always around'.

Much of the imagery takes inspiration from popular advertising. Using slogans to illustrate the affects of a commerical society, Hockney's hero experiences a social dilemma and potential loss of individuality in an American city.

California Dreaming

In 1964, Hockney visited California for the first time. The trip was a great source of inspiration, leading to a series a stylised landscapes and the first swimming pool paintings for which Hockney is best known. Drawn to the relaxed way of life, Hockney went on to live in Los Angeles for many years, commenting:

the climate is sunny, the people are less tense than in New York [...] When I arrived I had no idea if there was any kind of artistic life there and that was the least of my worries

The largest and most striking of three 'splash' paintings, A Bigger Splash 1967 exemplifies Hockney's attempt to paint transparent materials and transient moments. Unlike his earlier swimming pool paintings, which are populated with male figures, the splash is the only hint of human presence. Capturing a sense of both 1960s glamour and leisure, Hockney's colour palette encapsulates the optimism found in postwar Britain.

Rather than using quick, gestural marks to capture the constantly changing surface of water, Hockney took about two weeks to complete the splash, using small brushes and little lines. The artist has explained:

When you photograph a splash, you're freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way

Seeing Double

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy 1970-1 is one of a series of large double portraits which Hockney began in 1968. By this time Hockney was a recognised artist, often mentioned in the press and spending time with other artists and celebrities. Here Hockney paints the recently married dress designer Ossie Clark and fabric designer Celia Birtwell.

The couple are shown in their bedroom, in a relaxed manner. This presentation of a seated man and standing woman breaks with conventions of wedding portraiture and is perhaps suggestive of the future breakdown of their marriage.

Both subjects look out to the viewer, inviting us into their home and relationship. Working from both photographs and life observation, Hockney's style is both realistic and yet simplified. According to Hockney, it is his work which comes closest to naturalism. The painting required a lot of reworking, taking a year to complete as the artist states:

the figures are nearly life-size; it's difficult painting figures like that, and it was quite a struggle. They posed for a long time, both Ossie and Celia. Ossie was painted many, many times; I took it out and put it in, out and in. I probably painted the head alone twelve times

Celia would go on to be Hockney's model and muse for many years, featuring in much of his portraiture work.

A Family Affair

Alongside landscapes, portraits feature throughout Hockney's career. Rarely accepting commissions, he prefers to portray relatives, friends and people he asks to sit for him.

Created a year before his father's death, My Parents 1977 is Hockney's best-known representation of his parents. Painted from life, the work shows his mother as a poised and graceful sitter, while his father is hunched over reading a copy of Aaron Scharf's Art and Photography. Reflected in the dressing table mirror we can see a reproduction of Piero della Francesca's painting The Baptism of Christ 1440-1450 as well as Hockney's own work Invented Man Revealing Still Life 1975. The inclusion of these works creates a triptych-like image and hints at Hockney's own presence within the painting.

Ranging from line drawings to prints, photographs and paintings, Hockney's mother is the subject of many of his works. A willing sitter, his mother appears both a frail and assertive character, exemplifying the humanising quality of Hockney's portraits in general. It appears that he used the portraits of Laura Hockney to explore and cement their close relationship.

Portraits of Hockney's Mother

DRAWING WITH A CAMERA

By 1982, as part of an investigation into cubism and depictions of pictorial space, Hockney began to experiment with photographic collages.

He combined dozens of successive Polaroid photographs, taken from varying angles, to create a complete image, or what he described as 'joiners'. Making some 140 Polaroid works in a matter of months, these multi-frame images allowed Hockney to experiment with depictions of time, motion and the position of the viewer.

In Billy + Audrey Wilder, Los Angeles, April 1982 1982, we're able to trace Audrey moving her cigarette towards her face and Billy bringing a small sculpture towards his eyes. Each individual Polaroid is taken separately but experienced simultaneously, creating a dizzying effect and 'not the view you would see immediately'. This presentation of a subject from multiple viewpoints exemplifies Hockney's interest in depicting a three-dimensional world through two-dimensional art forms. As the artist describes:

I was at the camera day and night [...] the joiners were much closer to the way we actually look at things, closer to the truth of experience

The Bigger the Better

Ranging from scenic Californian terrains, to British landscapes, paintings of natural environments have formed a significant part of Hockney's artistic career.

Measuring more than four and a half by twelve metres, Bigger Trees Near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique 2007 is Hockney's largest work to date. Returning to his native town, Hockney depicts the arrival of spring in the Yorkshire Dales. The upper-half of the painting is dominated by an intricate pattern of overlapping branches, as the artist notes:

[Trees are] like faces, every one is different. Nature doesn't repeat itself [...] You have to observe carefully; there is a randomness

Resembling Hockney's photographic collages of the 1980s, the painting is made up of fifty canvases joined together to form one large picture. Working in stages, Hockney painted en plein air ('in the open air'), a method commonly used by nineteenth-century French landscape painters. As Hockney could only work on one segment of the work at a time, he used digital photography to create a computer mosaic of the full image and chart the progress of the composition. This combination of traditional and state-of-the-art methods has characterised much of Hockney's practice.

Hockney continues to work in various ways, experimenting with his techniques and materials.

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David Hockney: 80 years in 8 works - Look Closer | Tate

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David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. From his portraits and images of Los Angeles swimming pools, through to his photography and Yorkshire landscapes, Hockney's style continues to change.

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Exhibition Review - David Hockney: Drawing from Life at the National Portrait Gallery