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ronanmcd's review against another edition
5.0
I couldn't wait to finish this book.
I became far too invested in it. After one meat-heavy meal, I went to bed that night and spent the entire night somewhere between sleep and being awake, utterly convinced I was Hockney and wanted to draw instead of sleeping.
I draw for work anyway, and the early chapters rang true with echoes of my own college experiences to an extent. But far beyond all that is the easy manner of the text. It is exhaustive in its telling, but charms and beguiles with its ease. It's wonderful.
It does however, from a vantage point of time and space conjure up a number of elite & closed social circles. Hockney's luck was to enter these from his celebrated London beginnings. His star could not but rise. He was everything these circles needed. I don't say this with any jealousy, his work more than deserves celebration; simply put, it is interesting how the upper echelons of money and culture mix. If you're in, you're in. That was perhaps the most revealing part of the book.
I became far too invested in it. After one meat-heavy meal, I went to bed that night and spent the entire night somewhere between sleep and being awake, utterly convinced I was Hockney and wanted to draw instead of sleeping.
I draw for work anyway, and the early chapters rang true with echoes of my own college experiences to an extent. But far beyond all that is the easy manner of the text. It is exhaustive in its telling, but charms and beguiles with its ease. It's wonderful.
It does however, from a vantage point of time and space conjure up a number of elite & closed social circles. Hockney's luck was to enter these from his celebrated London beginnings. His star could not but rise. He was everything these circles needed. I don't say this with any jealousy, his work more than deserves celebration; simply put, it is interesting how the upper echelons of money and culture mix. If you're in, you're in. That was perhaps the most revealing part of the book.
elizabethrichey's review against another edition
5.0
I read this because I was going to a David Hockney exhibit. It was fascinating, and I loved the way this book (and the previous one in the series) uses Hockney's changing interests as a window into art history.
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