Abstract
David Hockney’s digital production – initiated with mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad – constitutes a compelling case for the redefinition of artistic practice in technologically mediated contexts. Far from representing a late-career novelty, his engagement with digital platforms functions as a critical extension of longstanding inquiries into perception, temporality, and pictorial construction. This paper investigates how Hockney’s work reframes the analog-digital dichotomy, not through ideological rupture but via an operative continuity that sustains classical concerns while absorbing new technological capacities. By analyzing key series – including The Arrival of Spring and his iPad-based self-portraits – the study reveals how Hockney deploys digital media to reactivate art historical conventions: atmospheric perspective, serial composition, and plein air methodology are rearticulated through backlit screens, multi-touch interfaces, and time-based rendering. The implications are both formal and systemic. Digital tools, in his practice, do not merely expand the aesthetic vocabulary; they redefine circulation, exhibition, and authorship in a networked culture. Hockney’s work thus operates as a site of conceptual tension – between the singular and the reproducible, the physical and the dematerialized, the studio and the algorithm. In tracing these tensions, the paper situates Hockney not as an outlier or an anomaly, but as a paradigmatic figure for understanding how artistic identity, visual epistemology, and cultural legitimacy are renegotiated in the digital age.
Presenters
Gabriel ColaçoStudent, PhD Candidate in Fine Arts, Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes (CIEBA) Center for Research and Studies in Fine Arts, Portugal António Trindade
Agregate Professor , Drawing, University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arrs, Portugal, Portugal Diana Costa
Assistant Professor, Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—From Democratic Aesthetics to Digital Culture
KEYWORDS
Digital drawing, IPad, Reproducibility, Digital aesthetics, Art and techology
