拍品 149
  • 149

DAVID HOCKNEY | The Only One with Waves

估價
1,800,000 - 2,500,000 USD
Log in to view results
招標截止

描述

  • 大衛・霍克尼
  • The Only One with Waves
  • signed, titled and dated 1991 on the reverse
  • oil on canvas
  • 36 by 48 in. 91.4 by 122 cm.

來源

Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
Acquired from the above by the present owner in January 1992

展覽

Chicago, Richard Gray Gallery, David Hockney: Recent Pictures, January - February 1992, cat. no. 11, p. 22, illustrated in color and illustrated in color on the cover
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Madrid, Fundación Juan March; Barcelona, Palau de la Virreina, David Hockney, June 1992 - February 1993, cat. no. 67, p. 91, illustrated in color

Condition

This work is very good condition overall. There is light evidence of wear and handling along the edges with very minor and pinpoint losses visible, most notably along the bottom edge and lower corners.The colors are bright, fresh and clean and the areas of impasto are stable. The canvas is slightly loose on its stretcher. Under very close inspection, a faint gray abrasion is visible in the green in the lower left corner. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

拍品資料及來源

“If you lose your sight you then use sound to locate yourself in space. Whereas, if you can’t locate yourself with sound you probably do sharpen the visual thing. But you’d never know that unless you were an artist. Nobody would know you were seeing better. I mean, I must admit the pleasure of the eyes is very great to me. Just looking at things. Sometimes it baffles me: why don’t people just look at the world and see how beautiful it is?”
David Hockney David Hockney’s The Only One with Waves is emblematic of the artist’s virtuosic technical skill and unyielding curiosity. Completed during a period of intense creativity, the present work simultaneously speaks to Hockney’s past artistic breakthroughs, as well as developments yet to come. The Only One with Waves gives unparalleled insight into the artist’s development and process, capturing Hockney in a transition from mimetic representation to abstraction, illustrating the power of the ocean with myriad painterly techniques and the kaleidoscopic use of color for which is the artist is best known.

Between 1987 and 1992 Hockney had a fruitful period of creativity staging opera sets all the while still expanding his painterly universe. Executed in 1991, the influence of Hockney’s work on set design is abundantly apparent in the present work. The Only One with Waves debuted at Chicago's Richard Gray Gallery from January to February 1992, timed to coincide with the opening of Puccini’s Turandot at the Lyric Opera of Chicago which featured Hockney’s set design. Emulating the flatness of a stage set, the canvas squeezes the pictorial plane, blocking entry into the tumultuous landscape. Hockney also channels the music of the Opera in his composition; the landscape swells in a crescendo while evoking imagery of the canyons and valleys off the Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu’s breaking waves. It is not hard to imagine Hockney riding in his convertible with the music at full blast, peaking in line with the rhythm of the road he traveled. The present work with its vibrant hues evokes Kandinsky’s recognition of music’s ability to synthesize emotion in people, and his attempt to paint the sensation of sound into his works. In Kandinsky’s Composition No. 4, executed in 1911, movement and sound represented by color and line, become conduits for human emotion, just as the crest and fall of Hockney's waves and the rich colors of his landscape echo his own internal dialogue.

Few artists are as associated with a single motif as Hockney is with swimming pools. The staple of Southern Californian backyards, the pool not only afforded Hockney respite from the grays of England but also provided him with an opportunity to be an observer: of landscape, of people; of colors, of light. Hockney once remarked, “Here in California you see more things, you see differently. You see brighter colors. And I want to use color – I want to get some sunlight in” (David Hockney quoted in Jan Butterfield, “David Hockney: Blue Hedonistic Pools”, The Print Collector’s Newsletter, vol. 10, no. 3, 1979, pp. 73-76). When thinking about Hockney, it is impossible to divorce his interest in pools from his formal interest in depicting light. The present work highlights Hockney’s technique of depicting light learned from his years outside the pool. Light in The Only One with Waves is stronger, more direct, because of the abstracted landscape’s proximity to the water and is further enhanced by the bright bold colors.  

While the landscape verges on abstraction, Hockney’s beloved water remains a key feature of the present work. Like Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hockney's wave rises and rolls forward across the canvas, the power of the ocean taking shape behind it. The artist's use of white space - or void - in his composition, is a further nod to Eastern art philosophy and the Japanese woodblock print tradition. Eschewing traditional Western perspective further renders the elements in the composition to an almost crude and distorted flatness. As Hockney remarked to Lawrence Weschler, it “comes closer to how we actually see—which is to say, not all at once but in discrete, separate glimpses which we then build up into our continuous experience of the world” (Lawrence Weschler, “True to Life,” The New Yorker, 9 July 1984, p. 62).