Waiting for Hockney is a documentary about the artist Billy Pappas, who spent eight years recreating Richard Avedon’s iconic 1957 portrait of Marilyn Monroe, using magnifying lenses, in a large, finely detailed pencil drawing. This ambitious, if eccentric project, which Pappas aimed to present to his idol, the artist David Hockney, is covered in the film.
‘Why would Pappas devote such single-minded fervor on a photo-realistic portrait that could far more easily be captured (and was, of course) on film? According to the artist, an outgoing, amiable guy who is miles away from the kind of cloistered hermit one envisions, he wanted to challenge photography, to reveal something in this technique that photography could not capture, and thereby create a whole new style of art. And, being the ambitious sort, he hoped his magnum opus would be his entree into the art world.
The key to his plan, Pappas decided, was the famous artist David Hockney, who had written some papers on photography and optics that convinced Pappas that Hockney would be the one to appreciate his achievement…”Waiting for Hockney”, and the response to Pappas’ work from the art establishment, raises some pointed questions about how art becomes Art. It asks why some artists are taken seriously, their every paint smear analyzed and honored, while others are relegated to the world of “outsider” art, no matter how interesting or meaningful their work.’
Richard Avedon, 1957
