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The Cavafy Etchings, 1967
by Peter Webb
(27 Jun 2003) |
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David Hockney first discovered the Greek poet C.P.Cavafy while a student at the Royal Colege of Art in the early nineteen sixties. In 1961 he produced two etchings ( Kaisanion with all his Beauty; Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ) and a painting (A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi - Egyptian Style ) inspired by Cavafy's poems. So when Paul Cornwall - Jones of Editions Alecto asked him to make a series of etchings relating to Cavafy in 1966 he agreed without hesitation.
The poems Hockney chose all related to Alexandria in Egypt with its barely concealed flavour of homosexual love, but Alexandria had become too spoilt since the poems were written in the nineteen twenties and so he travelled to Beirut for two weeks in order to make careful pen and ink drawings of the daily life of the city. On his return he created the etchings which vividly demonstrated his new fascination with observed reality after the more abstract imagery of his Rake's Progress series of 1961 - 63.
The Beirut drawings provided architectural settings for the two portraits of Cavafy as well as To remain ( a dry cleaning shop ) and The shop window of a tobacco store ( a shop beneath an advertisement for HIS MASTER'S VOICE in English and Arabic ). He enquired after the quality shows a man selling handkerchiefs to another man and is closely based on a drawing of a man selling bottles in the bazaar, which is inscribed by Hockney '' these bottles should be handkerchiefs ''. Hockney decided to concentrate on the homosexual poems and the rest of the series come from drawings of pairs of boys in his bedroom in Notting Hill Gate with the exception of In an old book and One night which are taken from male physique magazines.
The Cavafy prints are not literal illustrations of the poems but visualizations of their nostalgia for fleeting but memorable sexual encounters. The feeling of authenticity generated by the images is due to Hockney's own personal experiences. They were instantly acclaimed. Edward Lucie - Smith spoke of their ' staggering virtuosity ' and described them as ' not only the best work I have seen by the artist but probably the finest prints produced in England since the war '. The Arts Council made a film about the creation of the engravings entitled Love's Presentation.
Peter Webb, 2001.
Peter Webb is the author of Portrait of David Hockney ( Chatto, 1988 ) and David Hockney, Grimm's Fairy Tales ( South Bank Centre National Touring Exhibition 1993 ) |
There are 3 articles on David Hockney:
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