There is always something new in the Arts world, when combing mental creativity and technology. David Hockney is one of the most famous British artists of the last fifty years, leading exponent of Pop Art with Andy Warhol. Always interested in alternative forms which convey his art, in 2009 he was back to make talking about himself for starting painting with the application “Brushes” first on iPhone and then on the iPad.

After the exhibition Fleurs Fraîches in 2010 in Paris, he has been back to images drawing this year, in Copenhagen at the superlative Lousiana Museum of Modern Art.
Louisiana’s installation included several hundred of the works displayed on 20 iTouches; 20 iPads and a triptych slide show directed by the artist especially for the Louisiana Museum and several projections. During the exhibition, however, the paintings have being occasionally replaced by new creations, drawn by Hockney on iPad and sent via email .

Hockney began working with the iPhone in 2008 and immediately, as he says, “I was aware when I started drawing on the iPhone that it was a new medium, and not only a new medium but also a very new way of distributing pictures”. Who would have thought the telephone could bring back drawing?
The idea occurred to the artist’s mind in a very natural way. “I began to draw the sunrise seen from my bed on the east coast of England. The iPhone was on my bed: it contained everything you needed. It was the luminosity of the screen that connected me to it”.

Usually the medium between the painter’s creation and its public is the eyesight. But now the iPhone offered a different perspective: “I suggested to a few friends that they get an iPhone and I would start sending them my drawings. It was, I thought, a way of actually preserving them.” But there was more. “My friends commented on how direct the drawings seemed as they held the iPhone in their own hand”. A question raised: were they reproductions?  “Well no – Hockey explains – I thought they were exactly the same as I had on my iPhone.”
Actually it is just a digital file that the painter sends to his friends, so in theory the pictures are identical, at least to the naked eye. They would differ slightly because each surface of an iPhone is a physical surface. The medium is not only a mental reproduction of the eyesight, it’s a physical space that acts itself every time reproducing the image. So how would one see the paintings collectively? “It was this problem that prompted this exhibition. – Hockney explains – An interesting challenge worth a try: how do we exhibit them?”.
The iPhone in the hand is one thing, it’s quite another on the wall. A bit too small then, and it  is precisely this struggle for the gaze which is still going on and the connection between eye and hand that Hockney is exploring in these new iPhone and iPad drawings. “We devised a triptych slide show that we projected onto a screen” he says further. Printing them was totally out, as “They were not made for printing as the first thing lost would be their special luminous quality”. The iPad simply came out  because “It was bigger and I assumed the drawings could be more complicated”. But there is one thing new: “You could play the drawing back with the press of a button. I had never seen myself draw before. The only thing seen like before was Picasso drawing on glass for a film.”
Hockney draws to see, and he calls it self-deception, assuming we have seen all aspects of the nature. Quite often, during exhibition time, you could have seen him sitting in the Louisiana Café drawing on his iPad.

The results of his drawing, however, give rise to questions about the real nature of the “originals” and “reproductions, and the value – aesthetic and economic – of the work. In the end, what are they? “I am not totally sure what’s going on here with the iPhone and iPad. I haven’t figured out a way to be paid for them, – is Hockney’s direct answer – but as they give my friends pleasure, what does it matter at the moment? Just enjoy the exhibition”.