David Hockney
House Doodle 1984

According to the art historian Marco Livingstone, this etching represents 'stream-of-consciousness wanderings of the mind' (Livingstone, [p.17]). It owes an obvious debt to Picasso, whose work influenced Hockney at this time. The image brings together various moments, people, places and events in Hockney's life. In the bottom right corner is a swimming pool, one of the artist's most frequently painted subjects, with a palm tree beside it. He also shows Egyptian pyramids (Hockney visited Egypt in 1963), a California automobile driving through the hills around the artist's home, a distorted-perspective chair (another subject he was exploring in the mid-1980s), what appears to be a self-portrait in front of an easel, a ship, a cat and rats, and various friends and models.

Further reading:
Marco Livingstone, David Hockney: Etchings and Lithographs, exhibition catalogue, Waddington Graphics, London 1988, [pp.17-18], reproduced pl.91

Terry Riggs
November 1997