Bradford-born Hockney is due to reach the age of 70 next month

"The pictures I have chosen come direct from the heart," he said at the launch of his show at Tate Britain in London. "You can see how he has made them."

But he complained many young people would shun the exhibition as they had "no interest" in the visual arts.

"We are not in a very visual age. I think it's all about sound," he added.

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 David Hockney

"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," Hockney said.

"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 69-year-old also described the lack of drawing classes at school as a "tragedy" and promised that his show would "open the eyes" of those attending.

"All good art is contemporary, meaning if it's alive and doing something to you, it's working.

"But a lot of people don't realise that. Perhaps the young aren't looking, they tend to think it's not up-to-date or something."

Smoking ban

The exhibition features 165 watercolours, on display broadly in chronological order.

Tate Britain is staging Hockney's exhibition of Turner until 3 February

Among them is the masterpiece The Blue Rigi and Beginnings, which saw Turner - who died in 1851 - experimenting with colour and light.

The launch of the show also saw Hockney, an ardent smoker, renewing his criticism of the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, which begins in England on 1 July.

"I might point out Turner smoked. Monet smoked, and he died at 86.

"Picasso and Matisse smoked, and lived to a ripe old age. They didn't have dreary people telling them what to do."

He continued: "I shall just carry on. It won't make any difference to me.