David Hockney Cast Aside (M.C.A.T 25) For Sale

David Hockney’s Cast Aside is one of the final etchings from his 16-part series, A Rake’s Progress, and is a dramatic and dystopian image of his ‘Rake’ being thrust into the jaws of a menacing serpent. A disturbing image that is a metaphor for this young gay artist’s (an alias of Hockney himself) emotional experiences as an ‘outsider’ during his first visit to New York City in the summer of 1961.

Cast Aside is rich in symbolism; the recognisable ‘Rake’ figure with his wide rimmed glasses, clean frame and dark tuft of hair is here scaled down to a miniature size, depicted from the neck up, being held by a disembodied hand that appears to be throwing him into the jaws of the serpent. Cast Aside depicts a armless and legless, ‘Rake’ he is powerless and in the clutches of the disembodied hand throwing him into the serpent’s jaw, a metaphor for the lack of agency he can wield as a gay man in a society still intolerant of homosexuality. The ‘Rake’ figure is depicted with the same blank expression as in previous artworks, even though he is facing (social) death, arguably he realises he has no hand in his downfall: as a homosexual man he will always be made a scapegoat for society’s wrongdoings.

In contrast to the large hand and ‘Rake’ figure, both depicted in the same light, monochrome etching style as the earlier prints, the ominous serpent is depicted in a bold, heavily patterned form: the open mouth shows rows of sharpened teeth whilst the snake’s skin is embellished with a bold ‘S’ pattern adding to the tension of the artwork.

In Cast Aside, the fiery red ink clouds of earlier prints are re-configured as the bloodstains that will arise from this monstrous encounter of man vs serpent, which arguably represents the individual versus mainstream society.