In one of the stranger op-eds we’ve read of late, art critic Martin Gayford writes for Bloomberg News about British painter David Hockney and his huge crush on Apple’s iPad. We hope the piece isn’t an insidious new marketing plan targeting art consumers with spending capital and is instead just an attempt by The Olds to show their adaptability. After all, if David Hockney can find a way to transport the “tricky” device with an awkward shape (he “has always had his suits made with a large internal jacket pocket for carrying sketch books”), so can you, you spry young thing. Wonder if Hockney’s trying to reinvent the swimming pool?
A few other gems uncovered by Gayford in his investigation of David Hockney’s oneness with the iPad:
— I got a text from [Hockney] reading: “I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.”
— They dropped into the inboxes of his acquaintances — direct, lyrical images of flowers and landscapes seen through his bedroom window. This was art for free, which is radical in itself.
— The iPad screen now allows him to make images of greater scale and complexity. Instead of just using one finger, he finds himself drawing with all of them.
— Another difference between the iPad and conventional drawing media is that the former is luminous. Thus, in a way it resembles stained glass or mosaic, which reflect light. This led Hockney toward certain themes. “The fact that it’s illuminated makes you choose luminous subjects, or at least I did: the sunrise, for example, and flower vases with water in them that catch reflections.”
David Hockney’s Place Furstenberg, painted a shocking 25 years before the invention of the iPad (that would be 1985). With paint.
Hockney explains, for the two of you who haven’t heard, why the iPad is so fricking brilliant:
It’s a new medium, eight times the size of the iPhone.
And there you have it. Silly Brits.