According To Prescriptions Of Ancient Magicians
According To Prescriptions Of Ancient Magicians
Signed Print
David Hockney
£2,300-£3,500Value Indicator
$4,750-$7,500 Value Indicator
$4,250-$6,500 Value Indicator
¥22,000-¥35,000 Value Indicator
€2,650-€4,050 Value Indicator
$25,000-$35,000 Value Indicator
¥450,000-¥690,000 Value Indicator
$3,150-$4,750 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
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Medium: Etching
Year: 1966
Size: H 35cm x W 22cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | Rosebery's Fine Art Auctioneers | United Kingdom | |||
| November 2023 | Stockholms Auction House | Sweden | |||
| September 2023 | Bonhams Knightsbridge | United Kingdom | |||
| June 2023 | Bonhams New Bond Street | United Kingdom | |||
| September 2019 | Quittenbaum | Germany | |||
| May 2019 | Wright | United States | |||
| December 2004 | Lempertz, Cologne | Germany |
Meaning & Analysis
Created as part of Illustrations For Fourteen Poems By C. P. Cavafy, According To Prescriptions Of Ancient Magicians (1967) is a signed etching by David Hockney that represents his lifelong inspiration with gay culture and world literature. Through the subtle and intimate images of young male couples recurring in the series, Hockney aims not only to evoke the atmosphere of Cavafy’s poems but also represents the very quality of the Alexandria-born Greek poet’s writing.
In According To The Formulas Of Ancient Greco-Syrian Magicians (1931), one of Cavafy’s last poems that inspired the etching, a man longs to be reunited with the lover of his youth, wishing for a potion to move him back in time and “bring back the age of twenty-three again; bring my friend at twenty-two years old back [to me] again – his beauty, his love.’’ The drawing of two men in bed presented in the print was copied onto the etching plate from Boys In Bed, Beirut, an ink drawing of Hockney’s friends made in London.
The etching captures the evolution of Hockney’s approach to the themes of eroticism and same-sex desire. Having debuted as an artist before homosexual acts between men were legalized in England and Wales in 1967, Hockney started with a subtle and rather indirect way of representing gay love. We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), an early painting inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem of the same title, engages with intimacy and eroticism through subtle symbols and highly abstracted representation. Preceding the artist’s bold nude portraits of his lovers including Gregory Evans, the Cavafy illustrations represent the gradual evolution of Hockney’s idiom.
