Snails Space
The complete set of 10 digital prints in colors
Medium: Digital inkjet print in colors on heavy textured Somerset paper
Year: 1995
All Images: 32 3/4 x 41 3/4 inches (83.2 x 106 cm)
All Sheets: 35 x 43 5/8 inches (88.9 x 110.8 cm)
Edition: 45
Publisher: Nash Editions, Los Angeles
Literature: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (354-363)
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil with the publisher’s blindstamp
Snails Space captures details of Hockney’s 1995 mixed-media installation at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. The large-scale piece was exhibited at Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian Museum in the same year. Snails Space is both a summary of Hockney’s career and a poignant example of his belief that art should “overcome the sterility of despair.” It grew out of his practice of arranging separate canvases around the studio, painting the floor, and inviting his visitors to step into the world of his paintings. The scale of Snails Space recalls Hockney’s gigantic landscapes of Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, canvases that offered the sensual experience of driving through the canyons of his adopted home. Here the artist painted the two attached canvases and floor piece to look like a tiny, tangled world blown up to a preposterous size. Three-dimensional and painted patterns and shapes suggest enchanted forests and streams. These appear to advance and recede with the changing colors provided by a nine-minute computer program, and the viewer follows these shifts as he would the episodes of a stage play.
David Hockney, Snails Space with Vari-Lites, “Painting as Performance”, 1995-1996, oil on two canvases, acrylic on canvas-covered masonite, wood dowels, overall: 84 x 260 x 135 in. (213.4 x 660.4 x 342.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Nan Tucker McEvoy, 2003.31A-X, © 1995-96, David Hockney
The installation unfolds as a kind of silent performance that evokes Hockney’s experience of designing sets and costumes for operas even as he lost his hearing. In the absence of sound, pure visual experience compensates and suggests a different narrative to every viewer. The title offers a pun and a suggestion from the artist. To sit in this installation through the entire cycle of light shifts is to take time for what Hockney called “the pleasure of looking” that leads us to understand “how beautiful the world is.”
1. The Studio #26 (MCAT 354)
3. Second Detail, March 25th 1995 (MCAT 356)
4. Third Detail, March 25th 1995 (MCAT 357)
5. Fourth Detail, March 25th 1995 (MCAT 358)
6. Fifth Detail, March 25th 1995 (MCAT 359)
7. The Studio, March 28th 1995 (MCAT 360)
8. The Studio #45 (MCAT 361)
9. Photography is Dead Long Live Painting (MCAT 362)
10. Roses for Mother (MCAT 363)
Auction Results
The Studio #26 (MCAT 354)
Heritage Auctions: 18 November 2020
USD 10,000
DAVID HOCKNEY (B.1937)
The Studio # 26, 1995
Inkjet print in colors on Somerset wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered along lower edge
Second Detail, Snails Space, March 25th 1995
Germann Auktionen Zurich: 22 June 2022
Estimated: CHF 5,000 – 8,000
CHF 21,030 / USD 21,770
DAVID HOCKNEY (1937 (GB))
Snails Space, March 25th, 1995, 1995
Digital print
Signed and dated lower right: David Hockney, 95
Edition 41/45
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 July 2020
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 15,000
DAVID HOCKNEY (B.1937)
SECOND DETAIL SNAILS SPACE MARCH 25TH 1995 (M.C.A.T. 356), 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on Somerset wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered #11, from the edition of 45
Third Detail, Snails Space, March 25th 1995
LA Modern: 20 October 2022
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 15,000
DAVID HOCKNEY
Third Detail, Snails Space, March 25th, 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on Somerset
Signed, dated and numbered to lower edge ‘David Hockney 95 #28’
Fourth Detail, Snails Space, March 25th 1995
Rago: 4 June 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 15,120
Signed, dated and numbered to lower margin ‘#30 David Hockney 95’
Christie’s London: 28 September 2022
Estimated: GBP 4,000 – 6,000
GBP 13,860 / USD 14,865
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Fourth Detail, Snails Space, March 25th 1995
Digital inkjet print on Somerset wove paper
Signed and dated in pencil, inscribed #41, from the edition of 45
Germann Auktionen Zurich: 22 June 2022
Estimated: CHF 5,000 – 8,000
CHF 19,810/ USD 20,505
DAVID HOCKNEY (1937 (GB))
Snails Space, March 25th, 1995, 1995
Digital print
Signed and dated lower right: David Hockney, 95
Edition 25/45
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 July 2020
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 16,250
DAVID HOCKNEY (B.1937)
FOURTH DETAIL SNAILS SPACE MARCH 27TH 1995 (M.C.A.T. 358), 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on Somerset wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered #11, from the edition of 45
Fifth Detail, Snails Space, March 25th 1995
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 July 2020
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 15,000
DAVID HOCKNEY (B.1937)
FIFTH DETAIL SNAILS SPACE MARCH 27TH 1995 (M.C.A.T. 359), 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on Somerset wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered #11, from the edition of 45
7. The Studio, March 28th 1995
Sotheby’s London: 14 September 2021
Estimated: GBP 5,000 – 7,000
GBP 11,970
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
The Studio March 28th 1995 (MCA Tokyo 360), 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on Somerset Heavyweight textured paper
Signed in pencil, dated, numbered 34 (from the edition of 45)
8. The Studio #45
Heritage Auctions: 29 October 2019
USD 13,750
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
The Studio #45, 1995
Inkjet print in colors on Somerset wove paper
Signed, dated, and numbered 34 in pencil along lower edge (from the edition of 45)
9. Photography is Dead Long Live Painting
Bonhams LA: 7 October 2025
Estimated: USD 12,000 – 15,000
USD 16,000
Digital inkjet print in colors on wove paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered ‘#38’ from the edition of 45
Christie’s London: 19 September 2017
Estimated: USD 2,000 – 3,000
GBP 5,625 / USD 7,600
DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Photography is dead long live Painting, 1995
Digital inkjet print in colors on wove paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered #19 from the edition of 45
It was a charming habit of David Hockney’s to present friends who were ill in hospital with paintings of flowers. The present photo-edition, showing a vase of sunflowers and a painting thereof with a dedication ‘Sunflowers for Jonathan’ was made for Hockney’s close friend Jonathan Silver after he had been diagnosed with cancer in 1995. The two first met in 1963 after Silver, who was then at Bradford Grammar school and Hockney was at the Royal College of Art, wrote to Hockney asking if he would design he cover for a school magazine. Silver later founded the 1853 Gallery at Salt’s Mill in West Yorkshire, dedicated to Hockney, which remains the largest collection of the artist’s works in the world.
10. Roses for Mother
Christie’s New-York: 5 October 2018
Estimated: USD 10,000 – 15,000
USD 8,750
DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Roses for Mother, 1995
Archival pigment print
signed, dated and numbered ‘#30’ in pencil (margin)
This work is number thirty from an edition of forty-five
Complete Sets
Phillips London: 23 January 2020
Estimated: GBP 25,000 – 35,000
GBP 43,750 / USD 57,425
DAVID HOCKNEY
Snails Space, 1995
The complete set of 10 digital inkjet prints in colors on heavy textured Somerset paper
All signed, dated and numbered ‘#36’ in pencil, from the edition of 45