David Hockney Viewing a Prison Scene (M.C.A.T 21) For Sale

David Hockney’s Viewing a Prison Scene is a signed and numbered etching, part of an edition of 50, from his character based, A Rake’s Progress series. A Rake’s Progress, a series of 16 etchings with aquatints, has a linearity, in which Hockney depicts the ‘Rake’s’ trials, tribulations and adventures as this young gay artist visits New York for the first time in the summer of 1961. Similarly, to Marries an Old Maid, this artwork directly relates back to the 18^th century tale by William Hogarth, who created a print entitled, A Prison Scene.

Viewing a Prison scene is a form of sequel to The Election Campaign in which the artist gives us a dark insight into the dangers of power gone corrupt and authoritarianism. The scene depicts the recognisable ‘Rake’ figure with his defined jawline and rimmed glasses looking at a handcuffed couple heading to jail, yet he is actually looking at the scenario through the prism of a screen (presumably a film screen). Hockney did visit Sing Sing, a correction faculty, on the Hudson River but never went inside and was largely influenced by a film he had seen at the time. The ‘Rake’ an alias for Hockney, a young gay artist, visiting New York, before it was decriminalised is here depicted from the waist up only: it is disconcerting to the viewer who has been following the ‘Rake’s’ progress to see him without limbs, recalling the myths and stories behind statues from antiquity.

Whilst the Rake is pictured viewing the handcuffed couple, we can only see the lower half of the figures, in the distance is an image of a pale, drawn looking character fitted out in a prison jumpsuit, emblazoned with his cell numbers.

Arguably, Hockney gives us a dark insight into the fragility of the position of an ‘outsider’ at that time in society, subject to the whims of corrupt, authoritarian power, in what is ironically the country of democracy and independence.