Hockney takes a pop at the iPod generation

At the launch of an exhibition he has co-curated at Tate Britain of watercolours by JMW Turner, the artist said: "I think we're not in a very visual age.

"You notice that on the buses. They don't look out of the window.

People plug in their ears and don't look much. But for me, my eyes are my biggest pleasure."

He added: "It's producing badly dressed people. [There's] no interest in mass or line."

One consequence, he suggested, was "a fallow period for painting".

Some people had thought they could replace painting with photography, but photography could be deceptive and was no good for landscape anyway, he said.

It was a pity that art colleges had given up on the art of drawing.

"To me the tragedy was giving up teaching drawing.

Teaching drawing is teaching you to look. That's what it's about. Looking is a very positive act to decide to do."

Turner was "an acknowledged master" to whom Hockney said he had returned for further study.

"But you come back to a lot of artists, like Rembrandt drawings - I didn't look at them for a long time.

Then you realise not only are they great, they're just like today - very alive."

The new exhibition, Hockney On Turner Watercolours, includes 165 works from the Tate's holdings, many of which have not been seen in public before.

Hockney has selected a number of "colour beginnings" which were the studies and sketches in which Turner worked out his compositions and colour harmonies for his oil works.

He said you could see Turner at work in them.

"You can his arm moving, you can see his hand, you can see his eye looking, his heart feeling.

They're very, very lively, well worth looking at to anybody who's interested in the visual."

Hockney admitted Turner was better than he was.

"He is, but he turns me on and I'll go and do some more."

Five recent landscapes painted by Hockney in his native Yorkshire are also going on display at Tate Britain today to mark his 70th birthday next month.

"I don't feel 70, to be honest," he said. "I've got big plans and I intend to do them.

Once you start making big plans, you get a lot of energy, even if you do smoke."

He intends to make more large paintings, like that just unveiled at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

The lifelong smoker said he remains "appalled" at the forthcoming ban on smoking in public places.

"I'm not a schoolboy. Mr Brown thinks he's a prefect and I can't smoke behind the cricket pavilion.

I shall just carry on. It won't make any difference to me. I don't go in pubs that often. It's OK in Yorkshire - I work outside. It won't affect me."

Turner smoked, he added, and Picasso, Monet and Matisse.

"They lived to quite ripe old ages, didn't they?"

Hockney On Turner Watercolours opens today and runs until 3 February. Admission free.