Red Wire Plant
Signed Print

Dating to 1998, Red Wire Plant shows David Hockney’s evolution of style in the medium of etching. While earlier series such as A Rake’s Progress or Illustrations For Fourteen Poems By C.P. Cavafy are characterised by their simplicity of line and often monochromatic palette, Red Wire Plant – and many of the other prints from the Recent Etchings series – are infused with colour and texture. Returning to subjects that pervade his oeuvre – that of flowers and the still life – in Red Wire Plant Hockney gives the plant an almost ethereal aspect, its wiry stalks wreathed in cotton wool like blossom, showing where the etching plate has been left without ink. Here we are reminded of van Gogh’s painting of almond blossom, representing a further link to the Dutch artist whose work Hockney pays homage to elsewhere in this series with works such as Van Gogh chair (black) and Van Gogh Chair (white). A great admirer of van Gogh, Hockney once compared his move to LA as being similar to ‘van Gogh going to Arles’ in terms of the change in light and the effect it had on his painting.