His embrace of new technology was interesting, in particular the fact he's been doing a lot of work on an iPad since 2010. You can see many of them here[1]. I went to an exhibition[2] of these a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by them. Goes to show that it's the artist and the talent, not the tools.
[1] https://www.hockney.com/index.php/works/digital/ipad
[2] https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/article-david-hockne...
He was on the BBC messing around with a Quantel Paintbox[0] (although 1987 seems much later than I remember it being.)
[0] https://howard-hodgkin.com/resource/painting-with-light-quan...
What strikes me about that is how much "dead air" there is without background music and how much of a long-format that was for broadcast.
You just wouldn't get away with that on TV now, the closest thing is some twitch or youtube streams, but even they'd have relentless background music ( and donation/subscription thank you sounds ) and other media at the same time.
But an actual non-live, edited programme? This whole 90 minute programme would be edited down to a 10 minute segment with endless repetition and audio stings, even on the BBC.
To me this shows how much we've lost from the TV format and the ambition it once had. Somewhere since it has fallen into a weird combination of lack of ambition but with a self-congratulation, where programmes often restate what they are doing as being ground-breaking.
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/david-hockney-a...
Currently on in the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park until the 23rd August.
I recently read his book Secret Knowledge on how many of the Old Masters may have used optics, and it's affected my thoughts every day I've looked at old paintings since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Secret_Knowledge.html...
Thanks for the book tip. It sounds like a similar theory to that in the doc "Tim's Vermeer".