1983
On New Year’s Day Hockney creates a complex photocollage of his mother, Ann Upton and David Graves playing Scrabble. In February he travels to Japan with Gregory Evans to speak at a conference about the uses of paper in art. Begins to study Chinese scrolls and reads George Rowley’s Principles of Chinese Painting (1959). In the autumn he draws a series of revealing self-portraits almost every day for six weeks. In November he delivers a lecture, ‘On Photography’, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in which he argues for dispensing with Renaissance one-point perspective in favour of ‘many points of focus and many moments’, which more accurately reflect human perception. An exhibition of Hockney’s stage sets opens at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and then tours for two years in America and Europe.

Self-portrait, 22nd Sept., 1983

Self-portrait, 26th Sept., 1983

1984
After a break of almost four years Hockney begins painting again. The spring and summer are spent painting portraits in which he brings the model closer to the viewer, a development of his photographic experiments. Celia Birtwell, Christopher Isherwood, and David and Ann Graves are among his subjects. Influenced by the narrative of Chinese scrolls he paints A Visit with Christopher and Don, Santa Monica Canyon. Travels with Gregory Evans and David Graves to Mexico for the opening of the theatre design retrospective at the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City. A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlan, a view of the hotel courtyard painted in reverse perspective, is the result of the trip. Returns to Mexico later with Evans
and Ken Tyler to experiment with a new technique – continuous tone lithography or the Mylar technique. Spends Christmas in Bradford and produces portraits of his family.

Celia With Her Foot on a Chair, 1984

1985
Works with Ken Tyler on a series of technically complex lithographs based on his drawings from the previous autumn. The Moving Focus print series are the culmination of Hockney’s experiments with Cubism. During the summer he lectures on his photographic experimentation at the prestigious Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles. Michael Deakin invites Hockney to try Quantel Paintbox, a computer program for creating graphics for a BBC programme, Painting with Light. Hockney creates a 41-page essay for French Vogue made up of photocollages, drawings, paintings and his own writings (December 1985–January 1986 issue). On the cover is a small portrait of Celia Birtwell conceived in a late cubist style.

Pearblossom Hwy, 11–18 April 1986

Cover for French Vogue, December 1985–January 1986, 1985

1986
In February Hockney makes his first home-made prints using an office-quality photocopier. He creates layers of colour by putting each sheet repeatedly through the machine. In Self-portrait, July 1986 he incorporates a direct photocopy of his shirt into the print. In the spring, he completes Pearblossom Hwy, 11–18 April 1986, the culmination of his experiments with photocollage. Begins the designs for the production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. Elected Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

David Hockney with Self-portrait, 1984, 1986

Self-portrait, July 1986, 1986

1987
Paints a number of canvases representing operatic characters including Tristan Looking for Shade. With Philip Haas, he makes the film A day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China about studying a seventeenth-century Chinese scroll. Acquires a colour laser photocopier and begins experimenting with it, using it to create direct reproductions of his paintings. In Faces, the catalogue to accompany a portrait drawing retrospective at Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, he creates virtually new works using the photocopying technique to select and manipulate details from the original drawings.

Tristan Looking for Shade, 1987