A Moving Still Life
A Moving Still Life
Signed Print
David Hockney
35 x 43cm, Edition of 200, Etching, 1977
£3,100-£4,650
$6,000-$9,000 Market Value Indicator
$6,000-$8,500 Market Value Indicator
¥28,000-¥45,000 Market Value Indicator
€3,600-€5,500 Market Value Indicator
$35,000-$50,000 Market Value Indicator
¥670,000-¥1,000,000 Market Value Indicator
$4,200-$6,500 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
A Moving Still Life (1977) is a signed etching by David Hockney representing one of his many dialogues with the influential movements that shaped the history of modern art. In the vein of both surrealist and cubist artworks, the print brings together a display of geometrical forms, unrelated objects and colourful lines, questioning the idea of a faithful representation of reality in art. Hockney’s departure from naturalism around 1975 is said to have been inspired by his discovery of Wallace Stevens’ poem The Man With The Blue Guitar (1937) during a holiday on Fire Island. In it, Stevens explores the image of a man who ‘do[es] not play things as they are’. The central idea of the poem is the imaginative freedom, bringing to the forefront of art the subjective experience of reality instead of striving for a single, realistic viewpoint.
The display of geometrical forms towards the bottom of the image, an explicit reference to Cubism and Picasso’s fascination with fragmentation and abstraction, in particular signals Hockney’s need to embrace a new, imaginative vision. The artist commented in this context: “In a way, what I have been trying to move away from is a fixed viewpoint. Well, that kind of line drawing on the whole works because you feel it’s accurate, you feel the line has got the volume, or the line has got the person. The line is doing all the work. The viewer knows that. And somehow the way the line is used there I feel I’ve explored. I’d rather explore it another way now.”
