Hockney's Portraits and People

If you like Hockney as I do you will love this book.

Great quality. A slight tear, but overall great

This is a wonderful book. It should be noted that according to the table of contents it is the same book as the U.K. Edition, "Hockey's People" by the same authors.

What makes an artist great? This is probably an impossible question to answer and Hockney has, apparently, little interest in greatness although few would say that he was not a great artist and some that he is the greatest living English artist of our time. The work upon which Hockney's critical greatness was determined have long since gone as he has gone through one round of experimentation after another since the 1970's and although portraiture has been a theme running through all of his work, throughout his career, it emerges at one time or another as a new experiment - double portraits, watercolour, camera lucida etc. The clue to much of this work being experimental is that it is not all good but, increasingly, it is all there to be viewed and evaluated as part of a continuum. Compare Hockney portraits with many of the best portraitists painting today and he does not come off too well, if the purpose of a portrait is to present a likeness, even to use good technique, but He eschews likenesses and says that the portraits are done to please himself. Sometimes, with people that he is familiar with, the likenesses and characterisation are superb - portraits of his mother, being a case in point and there are others, too. Other portraits are frankly amazing for their "badness" if there can be said to be a bad painting by an emminent artist. The drawings, as ever, are always magnificent. I suppose, what makes this book worth looking at and reading is that it is so instructive and so broadreaching: Hockney's struggle with representation - not portraiture, as such - is interesting and poignant, the pictures adept and skillful, nothwithstanding some poor likenesses, there are paintings that are powerful, some simple, some more or less good than others. To see such a range of an artists work altogether and reproduced well is always good and the accompanying text does no harm. All-in-all a good book to own and worth the price.

Quality of book. Undamaged and clean copy.

An excellent volume for anyone who loves Hockney's work, and even better for anyone wanting to discover how his art has developed over his long career.

I love this book, it has lots of lovely full sized imagesof Hockney's portraits, as well as a comprehensiveselection of his portrait work.The print reproduction of the art work isto a very height standard. Great book!

For a second hand book it was in very good condition. It arrived well packaged and exactly when they said it would. Very good book on the most important contemporary British artist.