The Art on the Cover: How It All Came Together

David Hockney has been experimenting with his new Canon RC 470 still video camera for only a few weeks, and he’s shooting whoever happens to drop by the studio.

That’s what I did the other day, just as the artist was looking for a fifth person to fill out a portrait he was working on. His studio assistant, Richard Schmidt, asked if I would participate.

Agreeing, I join four other volunteers in front of the artist’s huge, still unfinished painting of the Santa Monica Mountains. They are Schmidt, framer Michael Hogarth, hair stylist Phil Ackerman and Hockney pal John Fitzherbert.

The artist lines all of us up in front of the canvas. We all stare straight ahead.

Hockney picks up his new camera and starts shooting. Since the video camera images will appear on the video monitor in a specific order--which Hockney has learned through experimentation--the artist takes his photographs in that order.

He crouches and moves from person to person taking pictures. The first picture is the first person’s head. The second picture is the second person’s head. Methodically, he moves from one person to the next, shooting everybody’s head before he returns to the first person and starts shooting upper torsos. Lower torsos are next. Then legs. And finally feet.

That done, Hockney pulls a small floppy disc out of the still video camera, pops it into the still video playback unit and everybody watches a composite photograph take shape on the video monitor. One by one, the photos appear on the screen exactly as shot--heads, torsos, feet.

The screen now is filled with our composite image. Looking at it, smiling, Hockney is clearly pleased. He moves a few feet to his color laser copier, where he pushes a button and makes copies of the screen for each of us. He stamps the 8 1/2-by-11-inch print twice, first with a stamp that reads “There is no such thing as an unlimited edition,” then with a stamp that reads “hand stamped, David Hockney.”

Elapsed time from first photograph to first print: 8 minutes.