David Hockney

Kasmin Ltd., London
Peter Cochrane, London
Private Collection, London

Exhibition Catalogue, London, The Whitechapel Art Gallery, David Hockney, Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-1970, p. 39, no. 63.14, illustrated

Colours: The colours are fairly accurate though brighter and more vibrant in the original. The tonality of the top figure tends more towards candy pink in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is very light wear to the corners and faint handling marks in places at the top and left edges. There are sporadic minute fly spots to the suface there is a vertical faint rub mark at the right edge approximately 15cm. from the bottom edge. There are extremely faint craquelure to the area of black pigment in the lower half of the composition with several minute specks of paint loss to the right of the figure's neck. There is a faint mark of discolouration to the left of the upper figure and a small line of discoloration towards the lower right hand corner. There is no evidence of any retouching when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Three Different Things belongs to a group of groundbreaking works that David Hockney painted during 1963. Along with the other highly celebrated images from this seminal period such as Play Within a Play, The Hypnotist, Domestic Scene, Los Angeles and Seated Woman Drinking Tea, it reveals a startling creative versatility and maturity of vision from the young Yorkshire artist, who already by the age of 26 had gained a reputation as the most exciting talent of his generation both in Europe and America.

 

Hockney's singular ability and flair had shone brightly whilst he was at the Royal College, to the extent that he soon begun to feel stifled by the rigid academicism and outdated stipulations required by the degree course. He was awarded the 1962 Young Contemporaries prize during his final year there, which in turn bought him to the attention of Paul Kasmin - then a young dealer working for London's Marlborough Gallery. Kasmin's efforts to persuade Marlborough's directors to take on Hockney were unsuccessful so he decided to set up a gallery himself and signed an exclusive contract with the artist - something Royal College students were strictly forbidden from doing. Upon graduating Hockney embarked upon an ambitious series of inquisitive compositions that questioned the nature of painting, perception and representation, and which were to form the basis for much of his work over the coming decade.

 

Three Different Things was one of these works. It shows Hockney's growing fascination with combining different styles of painting within a single composition, and with juxtaposing disparate motifs seemingly at random to create a sense of ambiguous narrative - something he continued to explore after moving to Los Angeles a year later. The un-primed canvas is typical of Hockney's work from this period and was something he had first encountered in the work of Francis Bacon. Unlike Bacon, however, who used the raw canvas to add to the texture and physical immediacy of his portraits, Hockney's use of it here enhances the flatness of the picture plane and serves to exaggerate the illusions inherent to painting. The Three Different Things underline this even further by juxtaposing abstract and figurative modes of painting that together unite to expose their similarities as abstract marks upon a flat surface. This is particularly apparent in the upper section of the canvas which combines abstract and figurative styles in a single image of a naked figure against a non-descript background of staccato linear brushwork. In this it pre-empts the artist's iconic series of shower paintings which saw Hockney exploring different ways of depicting water through abstract, painterly invention.