Piet Spijkers wrote:
[Hockney] only wanted to show that with an optical device they could do things, impossible to achieve without the device ...
Piet,
A colossal presumption on his part, thinking things impossible simply because he, Hockney, is incapable of doing them. Any artist who has developed the ability to visualize in three dimensions can do the things Hockney presumes are "impossible." What monumental conceit on his part! How is it that a man supposed to be an artist for all of his adult life, now in his seventies, has never encountered a single artist in all that time who could do things freehand that he himself cannot do, and which he therefore believes impossible? I know or have known hundreds of artists who can/could do those things (most or all of which I was capable of doing myself while still in my teens), and I have lived at least ten fewer years than Hockney. The man is either hopelessly naive or completely dishonest and pursuing this with the ulterior motive of promoting himself. His theory is only plausible to people who cannot, or believe they cannot, do those things themselves with only their eyes and judgment guiding their hand. It is an attack on the very concept of artistic talent, and on the concept of individual genius.
Virgil Elliott
