A wide-ranging monograph of over 100 prints by Hockney David Hockney (b. 1937) is renowned for his distinctive paintings, mostly portraiture and landscape, but also for his approach to works on paper and printmaking, mirroring the vibrancy and diligent indexing seen in his broader body of work. Hockney’s prints often showcase a dynamic interplay of color, form, and perspective, reflecting his keen eye for visual storytelling of intimate elements of his own life. Throughout his career he has experimented with various printmaking techniques, including etching, lithography, screen printing, and more recently iPads, each method revealing his diligence in manipulating the medium – without ever experiencing, in his own words, “a feeling of failure.” His visual experiments, always surprising in their outcomes, suggest a rich interior and exterior life, captured in telling bits and fragments, suggesting a montage of quotidian scenes. Like much of his oeuvre, Hockney’s prints draw from extensive art historical study of the optical devices of Old Master paintings. Recently, his iPad-based art shows an interest in the changing seasons from his own perch in the English countryside, among other vantage points and geographies of interest. Whether depicting landscapes, portraits of friends, or banal scenes, Hockney’s prints exhibit a harmonious blend of traditional craftsmanship and his own distinct playfulness and insight to daily life. The title, Paper Trails, echoes Peter Burger’s writings on visual art’s relationship with the “praxis of life.” In Theory of the Avant Garde, Burger saw art’s relationship with the lived experience as becoming increasingly atrophied and distinct. In contrast, Hockney’s work displays an ever-evolving search for depicting snapshots of life that capture and celebrate its true essence-its character, its soul.
