David Hockney Series: Illustrations for Fourteen Poems for Constantine Cavafy
In an Old Book
1966-1967
Etching
Image: 35 x 22.5 cm
Paper: 64 x 51.5 cm
**
The source for this etching was a photo from an American ‘beefcake’ magazine. In the 50s and 60s such publications, like ‘Physique Pictorial’ and ‘The Young Physique’, enabled the distribution of erotic photos of naked, or scantily-clad men under the guise of an interest in body building or fitness; a clever way to escape censorship before the gay liberation movement. Hockney was fascinated by the magazines and even visited the offices of Physique Pictorial in a seedy area of downtown LA – where he explicitly relates this home of contemporary underground gay culture to his literary hero. He recalled, “It’s run by a wonderful complete madman and he has this tacky swimming pool surrounded by Hollywood Greek plaster statues. It was marvellous! To me it had the air of Cavafy in the tackiness of things.”
The poem chosen to accompany this etching describes a watercolour found pressed between the pages of an old book:
“It’s title was, ‘Love’s Presentation’.
A more appropriate name would be, “Uttermost Passionate Love’s…”
Because it was quite evident when seeing the work (the idea of the artist could clearly be perceived),
that the young boy of the painting was not destined for those who are ordinary healthy lovers confined to what is thoroughly permissible – with chestnut brown deep coloured eyes with the unique beauty of his face the beauty of fascination with the abnormal with ideal lips for bringing the loved body pleasure with ideal limbs made for those beds that current morality would call shamelesss.”
In his essay ‘Orientalism and David Hockney’s Cavafy Etchings: Exploring a Male-positive Imaginative Geography’, Dennis Gouws discusses the way in which this etching confronts the viewer by looking them direct in the eye, “Rather than frustrating the gaze, the full-frontal figure challenges the viewer to imagine what participating in an intimate homoerotic relationship would be like. Like the unsettling gaze of the reclining nude courtesan who frankly appraises the viewer in Manet’s Olympia (1863), Hockney’s nude challenges conventional heteronormative scrutiny.”
signature:
Signed and dated ‘66’ by the artist in pencil. Stamped on the reverse with the Editions Alecto publication number.
paper: Printed on handmade vellum wove 72 lb Royal paper by J. Barcham Green Ltd.
edition: Numbered in roman numerals from the edition of 25 + 5 APs in Edition E.
printer: Printed in black ink, from steel-faced copper plates, by Maurice Payne and Danyon Black at the Alecto Studios, London.
publisher: Published by Editions Alecto in 1967.
reference: Tokyo 52
