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Overview

The world of David Hockney, a bright star of British art - a talk by Peter Webb.

I first met David Hockney when I invited him to lecture to my students at Coventry College of Art about his work in 1968 as I felt they needed access to a bright new star of British art. He spoke brilliantly for well over an hour to a packed audience until the caretaker arrived to end proceedings. I kept in touch with him when I moved to Hornsey College of Art in London and often watched him at work on paintings like Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy and Portrait of an Artist-Pool with Two Figures, or attended his tea parties. He made an original etching for the Collectors’ Edition of my book The Erotic Arts in 1975 and later drew my portrait. In 1989 he agreed to my publishing the first book on his life and work, Portrait of David Hockney.

Peter Webb's Biography

Peter Webb has degrees from Cambridge and London Universities and a Doctorate from the University of East Anglia. After a lectureship at Coventry College of Art, he started teaching the first degree course in England on the subject of The Erotic Arts at Hornsey College of Art in London in 1970 and lectured extensively on related topics at universities and colleges throughout the seventies and eighties. He published his influential book on the same subject in 1975, later reprinted and updated. Subsequently he has written books on Hans Bellmer, David Hockney and Leonor Fini. After Hornsey, he taught at Middlesex University in London, and he retired as Reader in the History of 20th Century Art in 1996.

Peter Webb has also written many articles for art journals as well as exhibition catalogues, and has made over 60 radio and television appearances. He has lectured at over 100 universities, colleges, museums and galleries around the world, including Tate Britain, Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Dulwich Art Gallery, Norwich Museum, London Institute of Contemporary Art, Manchester Art Gallery, Leamington Art Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Trieste Museum of Fine Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, London, Sussex, East Anglia, Texas, Seattle, Montreal, Toronto, Hong Kong etc.