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Lot Essay
Executed in 1972, Armchair, Table and Lamp is a magnificent example of David Hockney’s deeply personal and evocative interior drawings. Rendered in a vibrant palette of contrasting colours, Hockney presents us with an unoccupied living room, its empty blue armchair, abandoned ashtray, and tilted green lampshade suggesting a quiet yet palpable presence. The wallpaper, a glorious golden yellow, is rendered in meticulous detail, its rich, cross-hatched texture reflecting onto the mirrored coffee table beneath it. On the right-hand wall, an area of exposed paper appears, its field of bright white suggesting a swath of daylight entering from the left. Executed in coloured crayon on paper, this work was created during a period in which drawing became a central preoccupation for Hockney, independent of the preparation of paintings. During this time, the artist never travelled anywhere without his sketchbook, meticulously documenting the places and faces that he encountered. In Armchair, Table and Lamp, Hockney presents us with a vivid recollection of his travels, its sun-drenched interior, bold and colourful furnishings, and three-point plug socket in the lower left corner suggesting a memory from a European summer’s day.
Armchair, Table and Lamp was created at a turning point in Hockney’s practice. In the autumn of 1971, following the break-up from his first love and great muse Peter Schlesinger, the artist eradicated all people from his work, channelling his feelings of grief and loneliness into portraits of inanimate objects. In this context, his empty chairs are embedded with a deep sense of longing, reflecting the period of depression that followed his split, and functioning as a homage to the absence of his partner. Recalling Vincent van Gogh’s Vincent’s Chair (1888), an analogy further suggested by the rich yellow pigment of its wallpaper, Armchair, Table and Lamp skilfully suggests both the absence and presence of a person, a feature which further recalls the deeply emotive canvases of his Post-Impressionist predecessor. ‘I’ve always loved chairs: they have arms and legs, like people,’ Hockney has stated of this signature motif (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Bailey, David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, 22 May 2015, p. 18).
In its powerful psychological aura, the present work can also be aligned with the artist’s celebrated double portraits such as Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1968–1969), Mr and Mrs Clark Percy (1970-1971), and George Lawson and Wayne Sleep (1972-1975), canvases in which he represents the complex relationships between his paired sitters. Despite their absence of figures, Hockney awarded the same level of attention to his domestic interiors, deeming them more than a mere stage for human drama, and capitalising on their great representative potential.
In Armchair, Table and Lamp, Hockney imbues his scene with a palpable, wistful emotional resonance that is deeply personal to him. Indeed, as Ulrich Luckhardt has astutely observed, the power of Hockney’s work often ‘is not the object or scene represented but something that is linked to the represented object or scene by association, or by a chain of associations. That “something” need not necessarily be another object or person; it could, for example, be a memory, a desire or a sense of longing. That empty chairs are among his favourite subjects does suggest that Hockney is disposed towards metonymy’ (U. Luckhardt, quoted in David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, exh cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London 1995, pp. 19-20).
Armchair, Table and Lamp was created at a turning point in Hockney’s practice. In the autumn of 1971, following the break-up from his first love and great muse Peter Schlesinger, the artist eradicated all people from his work, channelling his feelings of grief and loneliness into portraits of inanimate objects. In this context, his empty chairs are embedded with a deep sense of longing, reflecting the period of depression that followed his split, and functioning as a homage to the absence of his partner. Recalling Vincent van Gogh’s Vincent’s Chair (1888), an analogy further suggested by the rich yellow pigment of its wallpaper, Armchair, Table and Lamp skilfully suggests both the absence and presence of a person, a feature which further recalls the deeply emotive canvases of his Post-Impressionist predecessor. ‘I’ve always loved chairs: they have arms and legs, like people,’ Hockney has stated of this signature motif (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Bailey, David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, 22 May 2015, p. 18).
In its powerful psychological aura, the present work can also be aligned with the artist’s celebrated double portraits such as Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1968–1969), Mr and Mrs Clark Percy (1970-1971), and George Lawson and Wayne Sleep (1972-1975), canvases in which he represents the complex relationships between his paired sitters. Despite their absence of figures, Hockney awarded the same level of attention to his domestic interiors, deeming them more than a mere stage for human drama, and capitalising on their great representative potential.
In Armchair, Table and Lamp, Hockney imbues his scene with a palpable, wistful emotional resonance that is deeply personal to him. Indeed, as Ulrich Luckhardt has astutely observed, the power of Hockney’s work often ‘is not the object or scene represented but something that is linked to the represented object or scene by association, or by a chain of associations. That “something” need not necessarily be another object or person; it could, for example, be a memory, a desire or a sense of longing. That empty chairs are among his favourite subjects does suggest that Hockney is disposed towards metonymy’ (U. Luckhardt, quoted in David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, exh cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London 1995, pp. 19-20).