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Lot Essay
In one of the most iconic images from the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, a young man places a flower in the barrel of a National Guardman's gun at a peace rally. George Harris, the subject of the 1967 photograph by Bernie Boston, would go on to become an immortalized symbol of the Flower Power movement. But before that infamy, it was David Hockney who first immortalized George Harris, a burgeoning stage performer who is the subject of the present work, George in a Fur Coat. Drawn in 1966, the year before Boston’s photograph, it depicts George—a close friend and confidant of Hockney—reclining on a sofa in a fashionable fur coat, one hand holding a glass, the other tucked demurely between his legs. The crisp, bold line is executed in that quintessentially Hockneyesque way. He stares directly at the viewer, confronting us, examining us—proud, unashamed, self-aware.
The image aptly captures the personality of George, whose famous dismissal of conformity in the widely-reproduced Flower Power photograph echoed his general approach to life. Known best by his stage name, Hibiscus, he spent the late 1960s and 1970s revolutionizing drag theatre with his troupe The Cockettes, where he wore “glittery makeup, diaphanous robes and floral headpieces that would become his signature” (H. Silva, “Karma Chameleon” in The New York Times Magazine, Fall 2003, p. 106). His ingenuity and grandiose personality went on to inspire artists in all genres: performers such as The Osmonds, fashion designers like John Galliano, who drew inspiration from the Cockettes for one of Christian Dior’s winter collections. But first, in an act of foresight, it was the portraitist David Hockney.
The image aptly captures the personality of George, whose famous dismissal of conformity in the widely-reproduced Flower Power photograph echoed his general approach to life. Known best by his stage name, Hibiscus, he spent the late 1960s and 1970s revolutionizing drag theatre with his troupe The Cockettes, where he wore “glittery makeup, diaphanous robes and floral headpieces that would become his signature” (H. Silva, “Karma Chameleon” in The New York Times Magazine, Fall 2003, p. 106). His ingenuity and grandiose personality went on to inspire artists in all genres: performers such as The Osmonds, fashion designers like John Galliano, who drew inspiration from the Cockettes for one of Christian Dior’s winter collections. But first, in an act of foresight, it was the portraitist David Hockney.