David Hockney poses for photographers during the press view of his Royal Academy show, David Hockney: A Bigger Picture. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
This afternoon I went down to the
Royal College of Art in London, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary.
David Hockney, who graduated 50 years ago, was there to show the students
David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, a film made by
Bruno Wollheim about his blockbuster
Royal Academy show. (Incidentally, it only occurred to me when I was there that A Bigger Picture is a reference to
A Bigger Splash – doh!)
In the main gallery, students were putting the finishing touches to their installations. There was a table, set as if for a banquet, with models of fantastical buildings behind the place settings and vegetation including a cauliflower "growing" down the middle. Another featured a selection of posters based on the "
Keep calm and carry on" meme, with slogans including "Post-human has no privacy settings" and "Would you invest in Slough?".
Amid this bustling activity, I had a quick chat with the great man, who had just enjoyed a fag (
you may have seen his latest fervently pro-smoking letter to the Guardian at the weekend) and was, as usual,
immaculately turned-out. He had a lovely spotted scarf on and his gold molars glinted as he spoke. His passionate engagement with the modern world, he told me, has now extended to Twitter.
"I watched the reactions to my show on Twitter – I read the reviews on Twitter," he told me. Not that he tweets, alas: "I follow it, I'm an observer on it, but I don't want to tweet because it's too time-consuming, but it's a very fascinating new space.
"The press don't quite describe it right," he added. "It isn't just about a little comment of 140 characters, it's much more than that because it's noticeboards: people post something, it takes you to another person, it moves along. It's very, very new and fascinating. They'll pick it up here," he said – "they" meaning the students.
"I'm fascinated following it all," he added, "and you can follow it in Bridlington. It's isolated physically, which we like, but it's not isolated in any other way now, and it's a more interesting place to follow things, I think. Often stepping back you see more, don't you?"
You do – especially when the pictures are the size of Hockney's latest mammoth canvases. Unsurprisingly, the artist seemed thrilled with the reaction to his show, which has been a massive hit with
both the public and his fellow artists, though
some critics have been less enthusiastic. "I knew it would get a good reaction," he smiled, tapping my arm. "The show is one actually – one enormous piece, and people who don't get that pick out bits and little points. Not very smart, really.
"Especially for a landscape show, if people are queueing for it it tells you something. I daren't go in now, I'm too deaf to be able to deal with it" – he meant being mobbed by fans – "but we're very, very pleased with the response to it – and I'm not complaining about the press, either. Of course not. It doesn't matter what they say, either."
Hockney said that he didn't have any memories of the current RCA building (next to the Albert Hall) since the college moved the year he graduated. He studied at a building behind the V&A. "All the painters used to just come in and walk round – there's too much security now, so you don't get that. Security kills so much, doesn't it? They don't realise."
He was also displeased when the RCA gave up the studios he used to work in as student: "They had wonderful
painting studios with big north light and they built the studio here with windows facing east which was mad. Drawing and painting was the centre of the old college and I don't know whether it is now, but I always think the phrase 'back to the drawing board' tells you something, doesn't it? Drawing – it's still there. Nothing's altered in that way."
I asked what advice he'd give to today's students: "Follow your instincts," he said. "Don't believe that painting's dead, it's photography that's dying or changing anyway, because of technology, just as painting changes because of technology.
"I'll also point out – I mean, I don't want to plug the
iPad but they're cheap for what they can do. Some people might think it's a novelty but after a while you realise how you can use it – I mean, it's a camera and video camera all for £450, it's unbelievably cheap actually." But not quite as good value as six minutes with
David Hockney.
Charlotte Higgins @
'The Guardian'
