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David Hockney Receiving The Inheritance
'My first visit to America was something very special to me.’ Hockney
Receiving The Inheritance is one of the first plates in Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress series. Hockney created 16 etchings, which depict his own semi-autobiographical version of the ‘Rake’ as a young gay artist arriving in New York City in the summer of 1961, based on but differing from the 18th century tale by William Hogarth. However, this print from the series, is probably the one closest to Hogarth’s interpretation of a privileged ‘Rake’ about town with its reference to ‘receiving the inheritance,’ although in the case of Hockney’s Rake it is the money he made from selling prints.Hockney enjoyed the linearity of the etching medium and weaves a semi narrative thread between the prints in the series: we can discern the same emotionally broken figure as the first print, The Arrival, with his defined jawline and blank eyes hiding behind wide frame glasses. Whilst the character resembles Hockney’s own story moving to New York as an unknown, young gay artist, before homosexuality became decriminalised in the UK, the artist depicts the figure with just enough emotional distance that he could be representative of any homosexual male of the time.Whilst the narrative thread is not immediately clear, Hockney includes plenty of symbolic gestures; the young artist sits degenerate and disconnected behind a table, an older moustached man in formal attire, widely believed to be William S Lieberman, then curator of drawings and prints at Museum of Modern Art, who bought two Hockney prints, including Myself and My Heroes. He reads a document with a $20 dollar on it, floating above the document is a $18 sign; the artist is always fighting financial recompense.Hockney’s composition once again uses a pared back ‘playful’ etching style to depict this emotionally complex scene and combines a monochrome palette with bright red punctuations: a black and grey vase filled with leafy flowers, resembling Hockney’s later still life pictures, is contrasted with a bright red blob, similarly to in The Arrival, depicted as a halo shape looming over the artist’s façade.In Receiving The Inheritance, under Hockney’s mastery of composition and storytelling, a fairly simple scenario, becomes an emotionally resonant portrait of the struggles and uphill battles of the young (gay) artist in early 60’s era New York. -
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Buy or sell Receiving The Inheritance by David Hockney at Andipa Editions
Buy Receiving the Inheritance
Andipa Editions, as part of Andipa, have been at the forefront of the Hockney market for over 20 years. To enquire about buying Receiving The Inheritance by David Hockney, contact us via sales@andipa.com or on +44 (0) 20 7589 2371.
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David Hockney Receiving The Inheritance (M.C.A.T 13) For Sale
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