The David Hockney Retrospective : A Didier Ottinger Conference

On the occassion of the Paris Gallery Weekend, Didier Ottinger, Commissioner of the David Hockney retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou, will be giving a talk on how Hockney’s work embodies the age of technical reproducibility of images. Didier Ottinger is also a renowed French critic and curator, as well as Assistant Director of the National Museum of Modern Art Centre Pompidou.

The David Hockney retrospective at the Tate Britain in London, which is coming to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and will go on to New York and Los Angeles, presents more than 200 of the most emblematic examples (paintings, drawings, photographs, engravings, videos, printed works and more) of his body of work. This exhibition proves, once again, to what extent Hockney’s art has always been a blend of tradition and innovation, of homage and invention, drawing on the most recent technology — over the years the artist has used polaroid cameras, fax, photocopiers, computers and touch-screen tablets.

Between 2010 and 2011, working with an iPad, Hockney created a series of landscapes from the Yosemite National Park in California, capturing the silence of the nature — bare expanses and dense forests — as well as the movement of the visitors. Each drawing, composed with his finger on the screen, is printed in a limited number of copies.