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Lot Essay
"People said that the New Paintings had a three-dimensional look. I feel that is true, in the sense that they have two spatial dimensions - vertical and horizontal - and that the third dimension is of course time, the time you give a picture when you look at it and it pulls you in and moves you round and you therefore become aware of taking time." – David Hockney
Highly stylized, bold, and bursting with kaleidoscopic energy, The Twelfth V.N. Painting is a remarkable example from David Hockney’s The V.N. Paintings (short for Very New Paintings)—a seminal series of 26 abstract pieces that marked a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution. The series reflected a fusion of influences - the spatial awareness developed through his opera set designs, his personal theories on perspective, and the vivid inspiration drawn from the Malibu coastline. The present work was featured in several notable exhibitions throughout the 1990s and beyond, such as the Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Art in 1993 and in Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. from 2015 to 2016.
Hockney became deeply involved in stage design in the late 1980s, creating sets for Tristan und Isolde (1987), followed by Turandot and Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1992, the same year he painted The Twelfth V.N. Painting. The intense hues of greens and blues, fiery oranges and reds of the present work immediately capture the viewer’s attention, the effect of which mirrors the phantasmagorical lights that cast across the landscape of stage design of Die Frau Ohne Schatten. Set against a grey-blue outcrop in the upper left and center of the composition, several rows of carefully placed blue roundels evoke the presence of performers on an opera stage.
The V.N. Paintings series marks a turning point in Hockney’s art as it reveals his deep engagement with the traditions of art history. In the present work, the vibrant swathes of saturated color evoke the influences of several early twentieth-century masters. Its vibrant energy recalls Picasso’s dynamic layering of paint, while the interplay of shapes and tones echoes Robert Delaunay’s balance between abstraction and figuration. Franz Marc’s expressive compositions also resonate here, sharing a similar sense of movement and emotional intensity.
Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, Hockney’s work invites the viewer into an immersive experience, encouraging a personal journey through what he calls the “internal landscape.” This connection resonates prominently in the Twelfth (the present work) through the Fourteenth V.N. Paintings, as they were created in Bridlington, Yorkshire, during Hockney’s visit to his mother and sister in June 1992. The intimacy of that setting subtly informs the emotional depth and introspective quality of these works. In The Twelfth V.N. Painting, Hockney constructs a dynamic visual field in the foreground using short white strokes scattered across a soft grey backdrop. These marks suggest the motion and rhythm of a highway, guiding the viewer’s eye through the composition like directional cues. To the left, a grid of curved lines on a yellow background connects with a red surface, creating spatial depth and evoking the contours of a stadium or amphitheater. The interplay between these linear elements introduces a sense of three-dimensionality and transforms the flat canvas into an immersive environment.
From the outset, Hockney had viewed the two-dimensional world of the picture as both a challenge and a trap, believing that rigid conventional perspective often falls short of capturing the way we truly see and experience our surroundings. Traditional perspective tends to present time as static and space as fixed, anchoring the viewers in place and limiting their presence. For Hockney, truly seeing requires active observation, and real representation should capture that lived experience. When real space entered his creative process through the medium of stage design and the vast, dynamic landscape of Malibu, it profoundly shaped his artistic trajectory. These encounters allowed him to think more expansively about how art could reflect the way we move through and feel space, not just how we see it in a static frame. Ultimately, they marked a shift in his focus from the purely pictorial to a deeper exploration of spatial experience.
Highly stylized, bold, and bursting with kaleidoscopic energy, The Twelfth V.N. Painting is a remarkable example from David Hockney’s The V.N. Paintings (short for Very New Paintings)—a seminal series of 26 abstract pieces that marked a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution. The series reflected a fusion of influences - the spatial awareness developed through his opera set designs, his personal theories on perspective, and the vivid inspiration drawn from the Malibu coastline. The present work was featured in several notable exhibitions throughout the 1990s and beyond, such as the Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Art in 1993 and in Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. from 2015 to 2016.
Hockney became deeply involved in stage design in the late 1980s, creating sets for Tristan und Isolde (1987), followed by Turandot and Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1992, the same year he painted The Twelfth V.N. Painting. The intense hues of greens and blues, fiery oranges and reds of the present work immediately capture the viewer’s attention, the effect of which mirrors the phantasmagorical lights that cast across the landscape of stage design of Die Frau Ohne Schatten. Set against a grey-blue outcrop in the upper left and center of the composition, several rows of carefully placed blue roundels evoke the presence of performers on an opera stage.
The V.N. Paintings series marks a turning point in Hockney’s art as it reveals his deep engagement with the traditions of art history. In the present work, the vibrant swathes of saturated color evoke the influences of several early twentieth-century masters. Its vibrant energy recalls Picasso’s dynamic layering of paint, while the interplay of shapes and tones echoes Robert Delaunay’s balance between abstraction and figuration. Franz Marc’s expressive compositions also resonate here, sharing a similar sense of movement and emotional intensity.
Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, Hockney’s work invites the viewer into an immersive experience, encouraging a personal journey through what he calls the “internal landscape.” This connection resonates prominently in the Twelfth (the present work) through the Fourteenth V.N. Paintings, as they were created in Bridlington, Yorkshire, during Hockney’s visit to his mother and sister in June 1992. The intimacy of that setting subtly informs the emotional depth and introspective quality of these works. In The Twelfth V.N. Painting, Hockney constructs a dynamic visual field in the foreground using short white strokes scattered across a soft grey backdrop. These marks suggest the motion and rhythm of a highway, guiding the viewer’s eye through the composition like directional cues. To the left, a grid of curved lines on a yellow background connects with a red surface, creating spatial depth and evoking the contours of a stadium or amphitheater. The interplay between these linear elements introduces a sense of three-dimensionality and transforms the flat canvas into an immersive environment.
From the outset, Hockney had viewed the two-dimensional world of the picture as both a challenge and a trap, believing that rigid conventional perspective often falls short of capturing the way we truly see and experience our surroundings. Traditional perspective tends to present time as static and space as fixed, anchoring the viewers in place and limiting their presence. For Hockney, truly seeing requires active observation, and real representation should capture that lived experience. When real space entered his creative process through the medium of stage design and the vast, dynamic landscape of Malibu, it profoundly shaped his artistic trajectory. These encounters allowed him to think more expansively about how art could reflect the way we move through and feel space, not just how we see it in a static frame. Ultimately, they marked a shift in his focus from the purely pictorial to a deeper exploration of spatial experience.