David Hockney's Alphabet

David Hockney (b. 1937) alludes to literary themes across his oeuvre. His biographer, Christopher Simon Sykes, highlights the extent of the artist’s frame of literary reference, acknowledging that his repertoire extends from ‘Biggles to the Brontës, the local classics, [and] to Dickens.’ Sykes also registers the young Hockney’s early interest in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1812) – a subject he later returns to via a complete series of supporting illustrations.
Much of his output hinges on the interplay of text and illustration, while stylistically aligning with Pop art - for which he was a key proponent at this time. Pop art lends itself to literary reference, with branding, advertisements or slogans infusing seamlessly into the visual lexicon of consumerism and commodification. This blending of text and illustration is familiar to Hockney’s wider career, though observed most overtly in his illustrations across several portfolios.

Hockney’s Alphabet was compiled in 1991 with the aim of raising funds for the AIDS Crisis Trust in London. Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995): English poet and novelist, orchestrated the collaboration, inviting acclaimed writers to contribute texts to accompany each letter of the alphabet, drawn and designed by Hockney in his expressive typography. The project is realised as a bound book comprising a lithograph for each letter and accompanied by literary musings. Paul Theroux presents his philosophy on death for the letter ‘D’ while Joyce Carol Oates uses ‘B’ as an opportunity to ruminate about the nature of existence. For ‘F’, Norman Miller ironically submits his letter to Spender exasperating the lack of time he has for such a fun project, while for ‘T’ Kazuo Ishiguro inanely pens an ode to the T-Bone Steak.

Hockney’s visuals playfully map the feeling of each letter. ‘U’ appears as multiple iterations of an unbroken scalloped wave, suggesting the motion of a mindless doodle or dual interest in the malleability of phonetics of vowels.

Discover the H-Y of Hockney below

In 1963, Hockney travelled to California for the first time. His vision of Los Angeles in the sixties was that of a hedonistic and liberal haven. The city influenced his vibrant use of colour, shadow and light. It was here that Hockney embarked on his first major series of lithographs: A Hollywood Collection (1965), made in collaboration with master-printer, Ken Tyler at Gemini G.E.L Studios on Melrose Avenue.

A Hollywood Collection was conceived to reflect the ‘artificial beauty’ of Los Angeles. There is a satirical edge to this series; Hockney described it as an ‘instant art collection’ poking fun at those who bought art purely for prestige. Hockney presents the prints in hand-painted frames, as though ready-made to hang on the wall, and the series contains a selection of artistic styles deemed ‘fashionable’ at the time; a box-ticking exercise to decorate the walls of Beverly Hills collectors. Hockney teases:

'It's a kind of joke thing, a kind of home-made art collection with bits of everything in it, a nude, an abstract, a landscape and so on. I was working with a printer in Hollywood whose workshop was behind a framers. He had all these marvellous frames in the window. I got interested in this trompe l'oeil thing - a picture of a thing with something else within something else.'

The inkjet Snails Space prints Hockney created in the 1990s recall his iconic landscape painting Mulholland Drive: Road to the Studio (1980). Painting from memory resulted in blurring reality and fantasy, translating the physical landscape into a mental one. This practice marked Hockney’s move into abstraction which would inform his prints, as well as his paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds in the 1990s.

The undulating rhythms of Hockney’s Snails Space series evoke his paintings of the Hollywood Hills, where uniform gridlines of the city contrast with the winding roads and luscious foliage of his neighbourhood. Here, he transforms the art historical tradition of landscape painting into simplified geometric abstraction, revitalising the genre.

These prints correlate with his designs for opera stage sets in the 1970s and 1980s, an experience which shaped his attitude towards perspective. As a result, these works are imbued with a sense of theatricality, with large-scale versions of his 1995 Snails Space works being converted into stage sets, heightened by Vari-lite automatic lighting systems to create dynamic, immersive works.

British textile designer Celia Birtwell CBE (b. 1941) is one of Hockney’s most recognisable muses. Birtwell sat for Hockney hundreds of times and appears in around a quarter of his printed portraits. These portraits document her graceful aging, and the pair’s unwavering bond. She is characterised by her blonde tousled curls and eccentrically bold clothing – testament to her designs that Hockney was intent on incorporating.

Birtwell first met Hockney in 1968 in Portobello Market. She encountered him again through her husband, Ossie Clarke – celebrated British fashion designer and close friend of Hockney from the Royal College of Art in London. Birtwell’s close relationship with Hockney’s then-lover Peter Shlesinger meant she and Hockney grew close, especially when the relationship ended, and she stepped in as his confidant.

Birtwell’s and Hockney’s relationship is reflected in his work, which often echoes the domestic and private scenes seen in the art of the Impressionists Renoir (1841-1919) or Degas (1834-1917). These artists depicted women in routine activities like washing, drying, dreaming or cooking. Hockney’s use of the languid pose and doe-like eyes evoke a similar effect to these scenes; in representing a soft feminine ideal, the artists open their artworks to narratives beyond the frame.

Ken Tyler was a pivotal figure in modern printmaking, renowned for his collaborations with major artists, including David Hockney. Beginning his career in 1963 at Tamarind Lithography, Tyler sought to break free from traditional printmaking constraints, aiming to expand the medium to match contemporary artistic visions. His workshops, Gemini Ltd. and Gemini G.E.L. in California, followed by Tyler Workshop and Tyler Graphics in New York, became hubs of innovation in printmaking and papermaking.

Tyler’s collaborations with Hockney were particularly significant; they first partnered in 1965 on A Hollywood Collection, a series of six colour lithographs that represented various painting genres. In 1973, their partnership deepened with Hockney utilising new drawing techniques and colour palettes, resulting in the evocative Weather series (1973).

While visiting Tyler's workshop in Bedford, New York in 1978, Hockney discovered paper pulp, enabling him to ‘paint’ with this medium and expand his colourist skills. In the mid-1980s, Hockney produced the Moving Focus series, which explored space and perspective, drawing on influences from Cubism and his opera set designs. Through these collaborations, Tyler and Hockney transformed the possibilities of printmaking, pushing artistic boundaries.

While a student at Bradford Art School, Hockney began experimenting with different printing processes. Hockney is said to have learned the basic premise of etching in fifteen minutes via his then-classmate and friend, Ron Fuller. Harnessing his new skill, a flurry of works stem from this period of immense creativity, with Hockney finding an affinity with the medium and effortlessly adapting to its challenging properties. His earliest etchings are also testament to his broad frame of reference, with many prints referencing key art movements, like Cubism or Expressionism, advertising campaigns or even literary sources. Hockney is experimental with his etching practices, often mixing printing techniques to create his desired effects.

Etching is an intaglio (incising) printing process. The artist starts with a polished and blemish-free metal surface or plate (typically made from zinc, copper or iron). The plate is then coated with a wax or acid-resistant varnish; this layer is called the ‘ground’. From here, the artist uses a sharp tool to incise their desired image into the ‘ground’. Following this, the artist either douses, or plunges, their plate into an acid bath. The acid attacks the areas of the metal plate made visible by the incisions, eating away at the metal and creating deep grooves. The amount of time the plate is exposed to the acid determines the depth and width of the grooves. When the desired effect is reached, the artist removes the ‘ground’ layer with a solvent, revealing the now-incised metal plate. A layer of ink is carefully applied over this plate, ensuring that it penetrates each of the grooves. Once satisfied, the artist wipes the plate clean, leaving only the ink deposits in the grooves behind. Finally, the plate is covered with damp paper and several blankets that help cushion the plate, and it is fed through a heavy roller. This process transfers the ink from the grooves onto the paper.

Etching allowed Hockney to achieve very fine details, as seen in Two Vases in the Louvre (1974) where Hockney effectively emphasises depth and materiality. The window with a view to the courtyard and buildings beyond and the three-dimensionality of the two vases bookending the bay epitomise this.

Hockney visits Yosemite national park in 2010 and 2011, aiming to capture the epic proportions of the landscape, continuing the tradition of 19th century painters such as Albert Bierstadt (of the Hudson River School) and the photography of Ansel Adams. A revival of his enduring connection to California, Hockney’s willingness to embrace modern technology is testament to his versality as an artist. Having adopted the iPhone in 2008, he naturally progressed to the iPad in 2010 following Steve Jobs’ announcement.

The iPad offered Hockney a digital medium roughly eight times the size of the iPhone, allowing him to produce more detailed compositions. In both his iPhone and iPad drawings, Hockney used the Brushes software, though in the latter the stylus became a more permanent fixture. Brushes freed Hockney from the limitations of traditional art supplies – no drying was required, and erasure of components was easy. Like regular painting methods, the app enabled Hockney to build up layers of paint and change thickness of brush. 

In his iPad drawings, Hockney is not concerned about imitating photography. Instead, there is a focus on the marks made, which are particularly clear in the highly saturated colour palette of the iPad. Hockney’s favourite part of the Brushes app was that it signalled what marks the tool could make instead of what brush it was. To Hockney, this made the app a more honest account of true creating practices. In 2021, in a self-authored essay for RA Magazine, Hockney reflects that the app underwent changes that he argues ‘ruined it’. New iPads were incompatible with the software and so Hockney contacted them to express his exasperation.

In 2018, his assistant Jonathan Wilkinson suggested that they could rework a new form of Brushes, that aligned more with the original version. The artist recognises this as reigniting his interest in the medium again. From this new proliferation, Hockney made The Arrival of Spring, Normandy series, centring the French landscape. This series continued the theme of capturing the changing seasons with digital technology, which originated in his series of the same title celebrating Woldgate Woods in East Yorkshire, a decade prior.

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