Cardigan Road, Brid.
Medium: Inkjet printed computer drawing in colors on wove paper
Year: 2008
Image: 39 3/4 x 28 1/8 inches (101 x 71.4 cm)
Sheet: 44 3/4 x 32 1/8 inches (113.7 x 81.6 cm)
Edition: 25
Publisher: The Artist
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil with the artist’s blindstamp
David Hockney was visiting Yorkshire with increasing frequency in the early 2000s and decided to move into a studio in the seaside town of Bridlington, East Yorkshire, in 2008. The historic coastal town of Bridlington, or “Brid” as Hockney affectionately calls it, sits 75 miles from his birthplace of Bradford, and was the long-term residence of his sister, Margaret and his beloved late-mother, Laura, who passed away in 1999 at the age of ninety-eight. Bridlington subsequently had a familial significance for Hockney and, by 2008, he had already depicted parts of the town and the surrounding countryside in both watercolor and oil paint. However, Hockney was looking to gain a fresh perspective on this familiar subject, and once again turned to new technologies to reinvigorate his art. Having previously harnessed photography, Xerox printing and a host of other innovative printmaking techniques, Hockney embraced the computer as yet another tool to add to his artistic arsenal. Foreshadowing his innovative adoption of the iPad upon its release in 2010, Hockney mastered Photoshop and created several landscapes on his computer, likening this to drawing “directly in a printing machine.” Included among the images he produced is Cardigan Road, Brid., which serves as an important precursor to his later iPad works.
“To do landscapes, you’ve got to know the place rather well.
You’ve got to love it actually”
Left: David Hockney, Street Scene, Bridlington, 2004, Collection The David Hockney Foundation. Image: Richard Schmidt, Artwork: © David Hockney
Right: David Hockney, Bridlington Rooftops, October, November, December, 2005.
Image: Richard Schmidt, Artwork: © David Hockney
Depicting a quiet, residential street in a small town with Roman origins, Hockney experiments with the large variety of mark making tools available via Photoshop. He built the composition of Cardigan Road, Brid. with larger, flatter planes of color, before using thinner strokes to add details such as the chimneys on the red-roofed houses or indications of grass at the side of the pavement in the foreground. By altering the transparency of the tones he worked with, Hockney was also able to create shadow and depth. Using the slight curvature of the road as a vanishing point, Hockney’s mark making slips towards abstraction as the picture plane recedes, but the colors remain characteristically vibrant. While Hockney had taken to painting Bridlington in watercolor and oil en plein air, his computer drawings had to be executed in the studio. Conjured from memory, the peaceful streets of Cardigan Road, Brid. signify both the familiarity and importance of this landscape to the artist.
Source: Phillips
Auction Results
Phillips London: 18 January 2023
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 52,920 / USD 65,438
DAVID HOCKNEY
Cardigan Road, Brid., 2008
Inkjet printed computer drawing in colors on wove paper
Signed, dated and numbered 16/25 in pencil