"It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work"
About this Quote
Hockney’s line lands like a polite warning shot across the bow of the art-world press tour. Artists are expected to provide neat, quotable “meanings” on demand, as if the work were a product demo and the creator its customer service rep. His advice refuses that bargain. Watch what the artist does - the choices, the repetitions, the risks, the evasions - because that’s where the truth leaks out.
The intent is practical, even protective. When artists talk about their work, they’re often negotiating a room: collectors, critics, curators, interviewers, their own myths. Speech is social; it’s strategic, defensive, sometimes performative. An artist can misremember, posture, simplify, or deliberately misdirect. The work, by contrast, is a record of attention. It reveals what the artist can’t stop circling: the problems they obsess over, the forms they trust, the things they’re willing to sacrifice for an image.
There’s subtext here, too: Hockney is staking a claim for looking over listening, for visual evidence over interpretive gatekeeping. Coming from a painter who has moved between photography, stage design, iPad drawings, and obsessive studies of perception, it’s also autobiographical. His career argues that the real “statement” is method: how you see, how you build an image, how you keep revising what counts as real. The quote isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s anti-alibi. If you want to understand an artist, don’t chase their explanations. Track their decisions.
The intent is practical, even protective. When artists talk about their work, they’re often negotiating a room: collectors, critics, curators, interviewers, their own myths. Speech is social; it’s strategic, defensive, sometimes performative. An artist can misremember, posture, simplify, or deliberately misdirect. The work, by contrast, is a record of attention. It reveals what the artist can’t stop circling: the problems they obsess over, the forms they trust, the things they’re willing to sacrifice for an image.
There’s subtext here, too: Hockney is staking a claim for looking over listening, for visual evidence over interpretive gatekeeping. Coming from a painter who has moved between photography, stage design, iPad drawings, and obsessive studies of perception, it’s also autobiographical. His career argues that the real “statement” is method: how you see, how you build an image, how you keep revising what counts as real. The quote isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s anti-alibi. If you want to understand an artist, don’t chase their explanations. Track their decisions.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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