Figures with Still Life 1976 - 1977

David Hockney made this print, "Figures with Still Life," using red and blue crayon, etching and drypoint to create a very cool, sparse but elegant composition. I love the way he’s captured this weird domestic scene—it feels like a stage set, doesn’t it? Like the actors are waiting for the play to start. I imagine Hockney, bent over the plate, reworking the lines of the tablecloth over and over, trying to get the perspective just right. Did he labor over the cross hatching for the ‘shadows’? And what about the cubist-y, blocky shapes around the figures? I imagine him moving back and forth from a reference or a study in front of him, thinking about Picasso, about simultaneity, the way that multiple perspectives can be shown at once. It reminds me of a drawing mixed with a dream. Hockney’s work is constantly in dialogue with art history, so this print feels like a generous wink to all of us other artists out here, trying to find new ways of seeing.