Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains

Medium: Photographic drawing in colors printed on seven sheets of wove paper mounted to Dibond
Year: 2018
Overall: 32 3/4 x 89 3/4 inches (83.2 x 228 cm)
Edition: 25
Printer: The Artist

Signed, dated and numbered in black felt-tip pen, lower right

 

Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains is a monumental example of David Hockney’s multidisciplinary practice and his extended exploration into the medium of photography. Executed in 2018 for the British artist’s solo show at PACE Gallery in New York, the present lot belongs to Hockney’s later body of work known as “photographic drawings”. Depicting a virtual version of the artist’s Los Angeles studio, this panoramic photograph shifts between abstraction and representation, while extensively exploring the spatial relations between the subject and its surroundings.

Employing innovative methods of digital production, Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains showcases Hockney’s extensive engagement with new technologies. By utilizing a photogrammetric software to combine hundreds of single snapshots from various viewpoints, the artist created three-dimensional approximations for individual objects, which he then grouped in a notional studio space. By digitally altering the object’s colors, and manually adding highlights and shadows that contradict the principles of traditional lighting, Hockney combined his drawing and painting practices with photography, creating a photographic drawing which appears at once awkwardly hyper-realistic and subtly wrong.

Presenting multiple angels of view, Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains further explores Hockney’s ongoing investigation into the notion of perspective first began in the early 1980s with his composite polaroids. Introducing a complex depiction of space, the present lot attests to the artist’s efforts to transcend the constraints of conventional one-point perspective by re-inventing the portrayal of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Infusing the photographic drawing with multiple points of view, Hockney favors reverse perspective to one-point perspective, playing with our habits of sight and encouraging the eye to freely roam across the composition.

Hockney’s examination of perspective is additionally reinforced by the subject matter of Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains. The photographic drawing in fact depicts three of the artist’s famous hexagonal paintings from 2017. Constructed using reverse perspective, these canvases depict a vast range of subjects often based on Hockney’s earlier work, including the terrace of his home in Hollywood hills, East Yorkshire, the Grand Canyon, and imaginary, surrealist landscapes. Hockney employed the hexagonal structure to play with perspective further. As the artist explained: “The indentations paradoxically widen the sense of space and invite all sort of fresh lines of sight. Far from cutting corners, I was adding them.” By featuring these paintings in Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains, the photographic drawing further embodies Hockney’s enduring desire to transcend the strictures of traditional perspective.

Source: Phillips

 

Auction Results

Phillips London: 21 September 2023
Estimated: GBP 40,000 – 60,000
GBP 38,100 / USD 46,857

DAVID HOCKNEY
Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains, 2018
Photographic drawing in colors printed on seven sheets of wove paper mounted to Dibond
Signed, dated and numbered 14/25 in black felt-tip pen

K Auction: 27 January 2022
Estimated: KRW 135,000,000 – 200,000,000
KRW 160,000,000 (Hammer)
KRW 184,000,000 / USD 152,730

DAVID HOCKNEY
Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains, 2018
Photographic drawing in colors printed on paper mounted to Dibond
Signed, dated and numbered 22/25 on reverse

Seoul Auction: 22 June 2021
Estimated: KRW 70,000,000 – 150,000,000
KRW 140,000,000 (Hammer)
KRW 161,000,000 / USD 142,000

DAVID HOCKNEY
Seven Trollies, Six and a Half Stools, Six Portraits, Eleven Paintings, and Two Curtains, 2018
Photographic drawing in colors printed on paper mounted to Dibond
Signed, dated and numbered 16/25 on reverse