Celebration

A fanfare of colour and texture, Celebration repsents Hockney’s unique ability to translate his aesthetic across multiple mediums. Here we see him take the office photocopier as his tool, a machine he favoured because of the autonomy and spontaneity it offered in the printmaking process. While before he was reliant on an assistant to prepare plates and inks, with the photocopier he could take matters into his own hands, combining colour and texture, drawings and found objects, with immediate results. The machine was also an automatic printing press which allowed him to produce dozens of digital editions as soon as he landed on the right combination of layers.

Speaking of his newfound technique the artist said, “I can work with great speed and responsiveness. In fact this is the closest I’ve ever come in printing to what it’s like to paint: I can put something down, evaluate it, alter it, revise it, reexamine it, all in a matter of seconds.” In this work, which stands out from most of the others in the series, we can see the roots of many of his works in print and on canvas throughout the ’90s when he became more preoccupied with abstraction. Cut out shapes converge on a grassy plane, their outlines curved, lending the composition a striking dynamism. Fine lines and mottled areas of colour lend depth here and there while elsewhere flatness dominates.