Figure by a Curtain

Details

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Figure by a Curtain
lithograph printed in black and grey with screenprint in white, 1964, on BFK Rives wove paper, signed and dated in pencil, numbered 71/75 (there were also 16 artist's proofs), published by Editions Alecto, London, with their blindstamp, 1965, the full sheet, a deckle edge at left and right, in very good condition, framed

Image & Sheet 500 x 652 mm.

Literature

Scottish Arts Council, Tokyo 37

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Brought to you by

Murray Macaulay

mmacaulay@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2252

Lot Essay

Figure by a Curtain is based on the painting Play within a Play from 1963. 'The figure is a portrait of John Kasmin [Hockney's dealer]. Kas had always wanted me to paint him but I never got round to it as I couldn't really decide how to do it. Now it seemed appropriate to trap him in this small space between art and life'. Hockney was inspired by Domenichino's painting Apollo Killing Cyclops in the National Gallery, London, in which a dwarf is depicted standing before a tapestry depicting the mythological scene of the painting's title. 'It wasn't the subject matter from Greek mythology that interested me, but the fact that they really seemed like trompe l'oeil painting. They were paintings made to look like tapestries made from paintings, already a double level of reality'. The effect of Kasmin's nose and hands pressed up against the real glass of the glazed picture is suggested in the print with areas of screenprinted opaque white, which appear flat on an otherwise lithographic surface. (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, p. 90).

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