Name: Diploma
Brand: David Hockney
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of David Hockney's Diploma (signed) is estimated to be worth between £9,000 and £13,000. This intaglio print, created in 1962, has shown consistent performance on the market, with an auction history of six total sales since its entry to the market in April 2003. The hammer price over the past five years has ranged from £7,192 in January 2019 to £7,410 in October 2021. The average annual growth rate of this work is currently -12%. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 50.

Meaning & Analysis

This signed print by venerated British artist David Hockney - entitled Diploma - was issued in an edition of 50 in 1962, whilst the artist was still a student at London’s Royal College of Art. A stand-out example of Hockney’s gestural approach to etching, this print sees Hockney create his own degree diploma as a protest against the university’s assessment criteria.

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An example of Hockney’s early approaches to etching, the emotive, gestural and almost cartoon-like piece was produced as a visual protest against what Hockney considered the Royal College’s outdated approach to assessment. Refusing to write the essay required for final examination, Hockney created a mock diploma in a whimsical dig at the academic establishment and its traditional values. This move, Hockney argued, reflected his own deeply held belief that art need not explain itself by way of accompanying texts, written in an inaccessible academic register. The abstracted figures in the etching are in fact visual metaphors for key members of RCA staff, including a registrar named Mr. Moon; depicted as a crescent moon with sharp, attacking teeth, this character recalls another of Hockney’s 1961 etchings, Gretchen And The Snurl (1961). Hockney’s approach in Diploma directly recalls the eminently political and seminal work, We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), the name of which references a poem by American writer Walt Whitman. Complete with graffiti-like text, the form of which directly echoes those scrawled across the surface of Diploma, made coded references to Hockney’s homosexuality at a time when it was still illegal in Britain.