By Beth Hale of the Daily Mail
In a lengthy career as one of Britain’s most celebrated artists he has embraced most art forms. Now David Hockney has mastered the art of communication – by using his phone to paint pictures. The 71-year-old has taken to using the touchscreen of his iPhone to create mini-masterpieces. Hockney has had the phone for only four months, but he has already turned it into a hi-tech canvas. It even fits neatly on a miniature easel in his London studio. He has painted flowers and drawn landscapes on the iPhone, which is manufactured by Apple and lets users input commands directly on the colour screen with their fingers. As well as being a mobile phone, the iPhone takes pictures, plays music or video and acts like a handheld computer with high-speed internet access. ‘I lie in bed and send illustrated art lectures to friends and also my own iPhone paintings,’ said Hockney. ‘I like to draw flowers by hand on the iPhone and send them out to friends so they get fresh flowers. And my flowers last!’ Hockney is not the only one to have been swept up in the iPhone phenomenon, which allows users to download thousands of applications. They include everything from video games to translation dictionaries, restaurant finders, weather reports and live train updates.
For the moment his computer-created art is being printed in limited editions, which will sell for thousands of dollars. That is considerably less than some of his more traditional paintings fetch. In two weeks a painting entitled Beverly Hills Housewife will be auctioned in New York and is expected to make up to $10 million. The current record for a Hockney was set in London three years ago when The Splash sold for $4.5 million.
Editor’s note: Not much opportunity in the way of traditional art materials here, but we did note the AA Itty Bitty easels as a perfect way to display your iPhone art work! Natural = AA10108, black = AA10110.
