David Hockney The Election Campaign (Dark Message) (M.C.A.T 20) For Sale

The Election Campaign (with Dark Message) is a signed, numbered etching, part of an edition of 50, from the 16-print series, A Rake’s Progress.

In The Election Campaign (with Dark Message), unlike the earlier prints in the series, Hockney does not include the central character and protagonist known as ‘The Rake’ to lead the narrative. Instead, he focuses on political iconography, which all viewers can easily identify with, highlighted in big speech bubbles and bold text. The main text bubble is in bright red asking the audience to ‘Vote primary day, 7^th September.’ The speech is underlined with a long series of ‘etc, etc, etc….’ signifying the verbose, over delivered political rhetoric we’ve come to expect from election campaigns. Contrasting with the bold red slogans is the black inked out speech bubble suggesting something somewhat sinister, aka, ‘the dark message’ of the print title.

Looking towards and intently listening to the political rhetoric and campaign banter are two silhouetted figures, outlined in shadowy black ink: arguably Hockney depicts them as mainstream voters happy to go with the established political party line in an American city that potentially faces losing its individuality.

In The Election Campaign (with Dark Message), Hockney doesn’t include the recognisable ‘Rake’ figure in this context but a generic looking character, which distances the image from the young gay artist tale of A Rake’s Progress series to a much larger story of representation, liberation and democracy at large.