London, June 12: David Hockney, Britain’s best-loved living painter, has bemoaned the decline of art in his home country.

The artist, about to celebrate his 70th birthday, blamed the present “fallow period” of painting on the rise of the iPod and the decision to end drawing classes in most art schools. “Teaching drawing is teaching you to look. Looking is a very positive act,” he said at a gallery in London. Hockney said the spread of portable music had created a decline in visual awareness.

“We are not in a very visual age,” he said. “I think it’s all about sound. People plug in their ears and don’t look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure.

“You notice that on buses. People don’t look out of the window, they are plugged in and listening to something.

“I think we are not in a very visual age and it’s producing badly dressed people. They have no interest in mass or line or things like that.”

The result was the present generation of shock-art painters such as Damien Hirst