I n 1978, Leslie and Johanna Garfield purchased their first major contemporary artwork—David Hockney’s print portfolio The Blue Guitar (1977, SAC 199–217), his reworkings and interpretations of Wallace Stevens’s poems about Pablo Picasso. Hockney’s commitment to figuration and technical experiments proved a potent lure, and the Garfields collected more than 100 prints by the artist over the next forty-four years. November 15th, their comprehensive collection of Hockney prints will be offered for auction at Sotheby’s London, with early and rare graphic works by Britain’s beloved artist on view in the galleries at New Bond Street.
- Heather Hess, Curator
“A small number of people collect for love, and of those, an even smaller number collect what they love both broadly and systematically…Leslie and Jo Garfield were just such collectors.”
“Leslie and Jo Garfield were known for their open mindedness, enthusiasm, generosity of spirit and friendship. There are few collectors who consistently and exclusively buy prints. Leslie and Jo were very instinctive and they collected thoroughly and earnestly. They put together unique and extensive collections of such diverse interests and unfailingly maintained outstanding quality. They were immensely generous and supportive of Museum print collections from MoMA to Boston’s MFA, to the British Museum...They are hugely missed within the print community both in New York and London and it is unlikely we will see in the near future a collector couple so committed to the printed work of art.”
“The Garfields were passionate collectors who loved all aspects of print collecting: discovering under-recognized artists and movements, chasing rare impressions, sharing their gallery-like apartment with their cherished print community, and making their collection accessible through generous loans and museum donations. They were steadfast supporters of Print Center New York, encouraging our commitment to becoming a major hub for the medium. In 2007, we honoured Leslie, a founding trustee, and Johanna for their tremendous contribution to the field. And now we are honoured that soon the lobby of Print Center New York’s space on 24th Street will be named the Leslie and Johanna Garfield Lobby.”
“I started doing graphic work in 1961 because I’d run out of money and I couldn't buy any paint, and in the graphic department they gave you the materials free. So I started etching…”
Hockney initially ventured into printmaking while studying at the Bradford School of Art, producing his first print, Fish and Chip Shop, in 1954 at just seventeen years old. Five years later as a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney fully embraced printmaking as he was unable to afford painting supplies and discovered that the school’s graphic department offered free printing materials and facilities to its students. After allegedly learning the basic techniques of etching in just fifteen minutes from a fellow student, Hockney went on to produce dozens of etchings throughout his last two years at the Royal College, exemplifying his immediate affinity for the medium. These early etchings, such as Diploma, 1962, which Hockney produced after the RCA threatened to withhold his actual diploma for failing to complete his course requirements, feature wonderfully youthful and energetic compositions that reflect a deeply personal narrative of some of the artist’s most formative years.
“I was taken by the sheer energy of the place [New York City]. It was amazingly sexy, and unbelievably easy. People were much more open and I felt completely free. The city was a total twenty-four-hour city. Greenwich Village was never closed, the bookshops were open all night so you could browse, the gay life was much more organised, and I thought, ‘This is the place for me.”
In July 1961, Hockney travelled to New York for the first time, in part funded by a £100 cash prize won in a print competition for his etching, Three Kings and a Queen. As a young gay artist, fresh out of art school, New York seemed a dazzling metropolis, teeming with both opportunity and debauchery, in contrast to his childhood raised in postwar Britain where homosexuality was outlawed until 1967. Hockney’s etching, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean, created in the summer of 1961 to commemorate his trip to New York, reflects this fascination with American culture in its representation of assorted male figures alongside a brightly coloured American flag, which seems to overpower a much smaller, grey Union Jack. While in New York, Hockney sold a number of etchings, including Kaisarion with all His Beauty to William Lieberman, the Prints curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Hockney put the $200 he earned from this sale to quick use, promptly buying an “American suit” and bleaching his hair blonde, marking the beginning of the iconic style the artist remains associated with to this day. Hockney also used the funds from his New York prints sales to finance his first trip to Los Angeles in 1964. While Hockney is most famous for his iconic California imagery, his prints from this era reveal a rare insight to the artist’s early days in LA. Prints such as Dark Mist and Jungle Boy, show the first glimpses of Hockney’s LA iconography, featuring hints of palm trees and topless men, which would later become canonical symbols within the artist’s oeuvre.
“In a sense, faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me and the most interesting aspect of other people–the point where we go inside them–is the face. It tells all.”
Representation of the human figure can be seen in Hockney’s work since his early training at Bradford College. However, it was only after Hockney moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s that he began to regularly practise portraiture and his subjects became fully realised individuals rather than anonymous figures. The majority of Hockney’s portraits include a recurring cast of characters drawn from his close circle of friends, including the textile designer, Celia Birtwell, the renowned Met curator Henry Geldzahler, his studio assistant and lover Gregory Evans, and his romantic partner of many years, Peter Schlesinger, all of whom became recognizable signifiers of Hockney’s visual vocabulary. The close friendship between Hockney and his subjects translates to an accordingly informal and loose style of line in many of the portraits from this era. In this way, Hockney’s portraits of his friends, family, lovers, and muses offer a valuable insight into the artist himself as they present not only a representation of the sitter but also a reflection of his intimate relationship with each of them.
“I’ve always loved chairs: they have arms and legs, like people”
While Hockney’s interior scenes and still life prints may be devoid of people, he masterfully imbues these representations of inanimate objects with a sense of character and personality in their own right. Siri Engberg, senior curator at the Walker Art Center, argues that Hockney’s interior prints “are as much about portraiture as they are about still lifes or everyday objects. This is about the person who owns the sofa. There is so much there. Who was just lying there? Or sitting there? The absence is really loud” (Siri Engberg, quoted in Architect Magazine, “David Hockney on People, Places, & Things at the Walker Art Center,” 2021). Prints such as Cushions and Pretty Tulips, act as precursors to Hockney’s much-celebrated, contemporary iPad drawings, illustrating his continued infatuation with domestic scenes almost fifty years after producing his first interior prints.
