I have liked pop art for as long as I can remember, but I really fell in love with the movement after seeing a large retrospective of pop art from around the world at the Tate Modern last year.  There are so many ways to use this movement for revolutionary purposes, through the reappropriation of established cultural artifacts and ideologies.  But, as certain artists have proven, it is also exceedingly simple to not use it for revolutionary purposes, to merely create something that can sell.  Hockney tells the story of David Hockney, an artist who falls firmly into the latter category, somehow becoming famous by creating fairly boring and derivative works.

Going along with the artist’s predisposition for the uninspired, Randall Wright’s doc is also too by-the-numbers to be interesting – just like every other documentary to come out recently about a gay artist who is mildly interesting and has a lot of talking heads as friends and family members.  The biggest crime of this documentary is the fact that it is not even about Hockney: it’s about Andy Warhol!  Honestly, I found it difficult to shake the resemblance between Hockney (his look, story and style) and Warhol, which of course led me to question who was ripping him off: was it the documentary or the artist?

Obviously, I went into Wright’s film with no information on David Hockney and came out unimpressed.  If you are a fan of Hockney, you may get more out of this film than I did.  Even on those terms, don’t expect to extract too much out of this interchangeable film aside from its delightful musical score.

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Shahbaz Khayambashi: @Shakhayam