David Hockney has long challenged traditional perspective, especially the Renaissance notion of a single, fixed vanishing point. He argues that this form of seeing flattens experience and limits the viewer's engagement. 'We see with two eyes, not one,' he says, 'and we move. The fixed-point perspective is an invention, not how we really see.'
His photographic joiners, for example Pearblossom Highway, combine multiple viewpoints into a single composition, reflecting how we visually experience the world over time. This approach is carried forward in his *Moving Focus* series and even in later iPad works, which often show spatial layering and shifting focal points.
Hockney has drawn on influences from Chinese scroll painting, Cubism, and stage design all of which offer alternatives to linear perspective. His work embraces what he calls 'reverse perspective' or 'theatrical space', where the viewer is invited in, rather than pushed back.
For Hockney, space and time are inseparable in visual experience. His art invites us not just to look, but to inhabit a picture, to move through it. This makes his work profoundly modern and deeply rooted in the act of seeing itself.