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The Hospital Room Was Choked With Flowers - Signed Print by Howard Hodgkin 1991 - MyArtBroker

The Hospital Room Was Choked With Flowers
Signed Print

Howard Hodgkin

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29 x 64cm, Edition of 50, Intaglio

Medium: Intaglio
Edition size: 50
Year: 1991
Size: H 29cm x W 64cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
Last Auction: April 2019
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Auction Results

Auction Date
Auction House
Location
Return to Seller
Hammer Price
Buyer Paid
April 2019
Christie's London
United Kingdom
£850
£1,000
£1,250
November 2018
Swann Galleries
United States
May 2017
Swann Galleries
United States
October 2015
Bonhams Knightsbridge
United Kingdom
January 2010
Christie's New York
United States
MyPortfolio
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Track auction value trend

The value of Howard Hodgkin's The Hospital Room Was Choked With Flowers (signed) is estimated to be worth between £500 and £750. This intaglio print was created in 1991 and has shown consistent value growth since its first sale on 13th January 2010. This is a rare artwork with an auction history of five total sales. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 50.

Created with Highcharts 11.4.8Jan 2010Jul 2011Feb 2013Aug 2014Mar 2016Sep 2017Apr 2019£1,000£1,050£1,100£1,150£1,200£1,250£1,300© MyArtBroker

Meaning & Analysis

The Hospital Room Was Chocked with Flowers constitutes the fourth plate that Hodgkin realised following the publication of his dear friend Susan Sontag’s seminal book, The Way We Live Now. Sontag’s book was written as a personal response by the writer to the AIDS pandemic and the way its dissemination had tainted the lives of the gay community with anxiety and fear. The main character of the book is an anonymous man who suddenly falls ill with AIDS. As he lays in his hospital room, each day closer to death, the man is surrounded by his close effects, as well as by ex-lovers and acquaintances who grow increasingly close to him.


Hodgkin’s plates accompany the narration. Following his In Touch, Checking In, which is surprisingly representational, Hodgkin returned through this print to a more abstract and evocative language of colours and forms. While the red dots punctuating the image are clear allusions to the flowers the man receives following his hospitalisation, the overlay of greens, blacks and oranges confuses the representation and invokes the sense of suffocation felt by the man so clearly described by Sontag in the book. As much as in Sontag’s book as in Hodgkin’s visual vocabulary, flowers become emblems not only of affection and solidarity but also, as perceived by the dying man, of loss and irrevocable disease.