Homage to Michelangelo
from Homage to Michelangelo

Medium: Etching and aquatint in black and red on Rives BFK paper
Year: 1975
Image: 18 1/8 x 26 1/4 inches (46.4 x 66.5 cm)
Sheet: 23 1/2 x 31 1/4 inches (59.7 x 79.3 cm)
Edition: 200
Artist’s Proofs: 25 AP
Printer: Atelier Crommelynck, Paris
Publisher: Studio Bruckmann, Munich, Germany
Literature: Scottish Arts Council (173); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (162)

Signed, dated and numbered in pencil

In David Hockney’s Homage to Michelangelo, two women walk past a mural depicting studies by the most famous artist in the European historical canon: Michelangelo Buonarroti. The women, however, appear absorbed in their own thoughts, not appearing to notice the irreverent art they pass. In sporadic bold red text, heightening the sketchy aesthetic of the drawings, Hockney takes a line from T.S. Eliot’s famous 1915 poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In the poem, Eliot pokes fun at the trivial high art reverence that pervades the upper echelons of British society; those that use superficial knowledge of great art to appear more culturally erudite. Reducing high art to idle dinner table talk creates a subliminal irony in Hockney’s masterfully subversive etching as he draws a parallel between social commentary surrounding art to that of his own works.

The model for the women was Hockney’s close friend Véra Russell, a founder of the Artists’ Market Association. Russell ran a gallery in co-operation with her artist friends and colleagues in former warehouses in Covent Garden from 1973. She was notable as one of the few gallery directors to champion unknown and experimental artists, as well as established artist such as Hockney and Robert Medley, at a time when arts funding was unstable. As well as gallery directing, Russell also worked with the independent arts publisher The Petersburg Press, long-time printers of Hockney’s posters who eventually acted as his worldwide agent. While her influence was often conducted behind the scenes and remains largely unnamed to this day, her impact on the twentieth-century art world was remarkable.

Poetry has remained a central source of inspiration for Hockney, having already created a series of etching based on the homoerotic poetry of the modern Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. The works are visual equivalents to the mood and theme of Cavafy’s poetry, heavily leaning into the homoerotic elements as the young artist became increasingly explorative of his own sexuality. The single-line etchings depict variations on the theme of two men engaged in endless, anonymous pick-ups, drawing out from Cavafy’s poetry universal themes of fleeting experiences, nostalgia and the erotic.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto), ca. 1510-11.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1924, 24.197.2

The studies of Michelangelo have long been embroiled in scholarship debating the artist’s speculative homoerotic desires, as the studies of female figures take on a masculine form. Their muscular tonality, so different from the soft, elegant female forms prevailing the high Renaissance, has been seen to evidence Michelangelo’s homoerotic gaze. The artist’s canonical status, as argued by Emily Porter-Salmon, could have lent potential legitimacy to the exploration of same-sex desires in art; a tenet that was pervasive throughout Hockney’s prints of this period. While not overly explicit, that Hockney referenced Eliot’s narrator Prufrock – a figure grappling with his own perceived inadequacies and paralyzed by dilemmas (often so petty as whether to dare to eat a peach) – perhaps reflects Hockney’s own internal conflicts.

The print is part of the portfolio Omaggio a Michelangelo that brought together some of the most seminal artists of the time in celebration of the Renaissance master. Alongside works by Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi and André Masson, the portfolio was commissioned in 1975 and published to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth.

Source: Phillips

Auction Results

Christie’s New-York: 26 February 2025
Estimated: USD 3,000 – 5,000
USD 13,860

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Homage to Michelangelo, from Omaggio a Michelangelo (MCAT 162), 1975
Etching and aquatint in black and red on Rives BFK paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 117/200
(there were also 25 artist’s proofs)

Sotheby’s London: 15 November 2023
Estimated: GBP 3,000 – 5,000
GBP 5,334 / USD 6,664

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Homage to Michelangelo (from Homage to Michelangelo) (S.A.C. 173; MCA Tokyo 162), 1975
Etching and aquatint printed in black and red on BFK Rives wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and inscribed B.A.T.
This impression is a bon à tirer aside from the numbered edition of 200

Christie’s New-York: 28 October 2023
Estimated: USD 4,000 – 6,000
USD 4,032

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Homage to Michelangelo, from Homage to Michelangelo, 1975
Etching and aquatint in black and red on Rives BFK paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 23⁄200

Phillips London: 21 September 2023
Estimated: GBP 3,000 – 5,000
GBP 4,064  / USD 5,010

Uppsala Auktions: 12 May 2023
Estimated: SEK 40,000 – 50,000
SEK 42,000 (Hammer)
SEK 52,500 / USD 5,080

DAVID HOCKNEY (England born 1937)
”Homage to Michelangelo” (SAC 173, MCAT 162), 1975
Etching and aquatint printed in red and black
Signed, dated and numbered David Hockney -75 86/200