History of Pictures

A compact edition of David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s brilliant book, A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen features updated material and pieces of art original to this volume.

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.

Featuring a revised final chapter with additional works by Hockney, this compact edition of A History of Pictures remains a significant contribution to the discussion of how artists represent reality.