David Hockney Disintegration (M.C.A.T 24) For Sale

Disintegration, 1963, is one of the final etchings from David Hockney’s semi-autobiographical, A Rake’s Progress series. 16 etchings that create a narrative framework around Hockney’s ‘Rake,’ a young gay artist visiting New York City for the first time in the summer of 1961, mirroring Hockney’s own life experiences. Having experienced a whole emotional spectrum on this journey from isolation and disconnection (The Arrival), moments of joy and liberation (The Gospel Singing (Good People), Madison Square Gardens) discontent with the freedom and ‘democracy’ of the Big Apple (The Election Campaign (Dark Message), to the beginnings of despair (The Wallet Begins to Empty), this artwork is an exploration of disintegration – a metaphor of the self-disintegration of the ‘Rake’s’ character as a young gay man grappling with his identity.

Disintegration is the seventh plate in the series, in which Hockney uses a combination of etching and aquatint to update his A Rake’s Progress series, which references the 18^th century engraving series by William Hogarth of the same name.

In Disintegration, the downcast figure who has become the recognisable protagonist of the series: clean frame, wearing wide rimmed glasses with visible dark tufts of hair is depicted from the head and shoulders only.  ‘The Rake’ looks towards a billboard advert for whisky showing an empty glass on a checked tablecloth: the whisky billboard is indicative of the rise of 60’s commercial imagery and adverts, which lay at the core of the pop art form.  Unlike many of the other artworks in the series, Disintegration is oblique in its narrative: arguably the whisky advert symbolises a descent into alcoholism to fill the (empty) void of self-love from the ‘Rake’s’ disenfranchised place in society.

The deliberately sparse composition, emphasised by a whitened-out background, is a technique Hockney would go onto explore in many of his later lithographs and etchings, particularly his portraits. This sparse, stylistic choice focuses the viewer’s gaze on the subject and any interior objects, creating intimacy and empathy around the human figure.

In Disintegration, Hockney’s etching techniques, including line drawing and smudging, create an abstract artwork that evokes a mood of melancholy, decay and vulnerability.