Soon after the book's publication in 1982, artist David Hockney read Lawrence Weschler's "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist" Robert Irwin and invited Weschler to his studio to discuss it, initiating a series of engrossing dialogs, gathered here for the first time. Weschler chronicles Hockney's protean production and speculations, including his scenic designs for opera, his homemade xerographic prints, his exploration of physics in relation to Chinese landscape painting, his investigations into optical devices, his taking up of watercolor - and then his spectacular return to oil painting, around 2005, with a series of landscapes of the East Yorkshire countryside of his youth. These conversations provide an astonishing record of what has been Hockney's grand endeavor, nothing less than an exploration of 'the structure of seeing' itself.

劳伦斯·韦施勒是著名杂志《纽约客》（New Yorker）的特派记者，同时也是纽约大学人文学院院长以及芝加哥人文艺术节的艺术主管。他的作品还有《威尔森先生神奇的柜子》（Mr.Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder) (该作品曾入围普利策新闻奖的最终评审），《维米尔在波斯尼亚》（Vermeer in Bosnia），以及《杂感集：往事历历》（Everything That Rises:A Book of Convergences）（本书获得了2007年国际图书批评家协会最佳评论奖）。