David Hockney - Moving Focus

A panoramic new perspective on the life and work of one of Britain’s most important artists: David Hockney.

Coinciding with the artist’s eighty-fifth birthday, this pioneering new publication is an essential overview of David Hockney’s career. Breathing new life into the nexus of Tate’s collection, it reveals how his work can still surprise and unsettle younger generations of viewers today. Contributions from Owen Jones, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Ali Smith, Russell Tovey and more position Hockney within a wide cultural context, charting his journey from his days as a promising student to his place as one of the greatest artists working today.

Hockney’s work has delighted and challenged audiences for sixty years, and celebrated artworks from throughout his career are at the centre of Tate’s outstanding collection. This book features over one hundred of these paintings, prints, drawings and photographs. Seen together, they demonstrate the artist’s changing sources of inspiration and, crucially, the direction in which his work continues to move. Beginning in the 1950s when he made his first steps to becoming a modern artist, David Hockney: Moving Focus includes Hockney’s famous depictions of the Los Angeles cityscape, his much-loved portraits from the 1970s, and more recent landscapes and digital images that reflect his ever-present concern with time, space and perspective.

Helen Little is an independent curator and researcher. She was previously Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary British art at Tate Britain, London, where she specialised in British art from 1945 and realised major exhibitions and displays from this period.