A History of Pictures

From the Cave to the Computer Screen

£19.95
£19.95
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A new, compact edition of David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s brilliantly original book, with a revised final chapter and three entirely new Hockney artworks

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'I won't read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' AN Wilson, The Sunday Times

Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with the art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. What makes marks on a flat surface interesting? How do you show movement in a still picture, and how, conversely, do films and television connect with old masters?

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 make unexpected connections across time and media. Building on Hockney’s groundbreaking book Secret Knowledge, they argue that film, photography, painting and drawing are deeply interconnected. Insightful and thought provoking, A History of Pictures is an important contribution to our appreciation of how we represent our reality. This new edition has a revised final chapter with some of Hockney’s latest works, including the stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey.
Edition type: New Edition
Extent: 372 pp
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2020-02-20
Size: 24.0 x 16.5 cm
ISBN: 9780500094235
1. Pictures, Art and History 2. Pictures and Reality 3. Making Marks 4. Shadows 5. Picturing Space and Time 6. Brunelleschi’s Window and Alberti’s Mirror 7. Mirrors and Reflections 8. Paper, Paint and Multiplying Pictures 9. Painting the Stage and Staging Paintings 10. Caravaggio and the Academy of the Lynx-Eyed 11. Vermeer and Rembrandt: the Hand, the Lens and the Heart 12. Truth and Beauty in the Age of Reason 13. The Camera Before and After 1839 14. Photography, Truth and Painting 15. Painting with and without Photography 16. Snapshots and Moving Pictures 17. Movies and Stills 18. The Unending History of Pictures
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Press Reviews

A magic flight of a book … It’s a measure of Hockney’s vividness of perception that he can always put a cap on Gayford’s knowledge … Fabulous!
Clive James, Guardian

Enormously good-humoured and entertaining… Hockney asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artist seems to
Andrew Marr, New Statesman

An eloquent conversational testimony to the vividness of life lived through intelligent looking. You will see Caravaggio and Citizen Kane with fresh eyes
Daily Telegraph

Crisps up perceptions and help readers to look anew
The Times

About the Authors

David Hockney (1937–2026) was one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He produced work in almost every medium – painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking – and stretched the boundaries of all of them. His groundbreaking Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters is published by Thames & Hudson, as are his books in partnership with Martin Gayford: A Bigger Message (2011), A History of Pictures (2016) and Spring Cannot be Cancelled (2021). Thames & Hudson also published the catalogue of his blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2025.



Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator and the author of acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michelangelo. He is the author of Man with a Blue Scarf, Rendez-vous with Art and A Bigger Message. He has collaborated with David Hockney on A Bigger Message and A History of Pictures, and has co-written a volume of travels and conversations with Philippe de Montebello: Rendez-vous with Art.

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