History of Pictures

Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing, and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia.

Juxtaposing a rich variety of images—a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velázquez painting—the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and argue that film, photography, painting, and drawing are deeply interconnected.