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DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937) THE ROOM, TARZANA acrylic on canvas 96 x 96 in. (243.8 x 243.8 cm) execut...

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DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937) THE ROOM, TARZANA acrylic on canvas 96 x 96 in. (243.8 x 243.8 cm) execut...
DAVID HOCKNEY
(b. 1937)
THE ROOM, TARZANA
acrylic on canvas
96 x 96 in. (243.8 x 243.8 cm)
executed in 1967 <p>PROVENANCE
Kasmin Limited, LONDON
Private collection, United States <p>EXHIBITED
LONDON, Kasmin Limited, DAVID HOCKNEY, January 1968,
catalogue cover (illustrated) <p>LITERATURE
N. Stangos, ed., PICTURES BY DAVID HOCKNEY, NEW YORK, 1976, p. 83 (illustrated)
M. Livingstone, DAVID HOCKNEY, NEW YORK, 1987, p. 71. pl. 52 (illustrated)
P. Melia, ed., DAVID HOCKNEY, NEW YORK, 1995, p. 61, pl. 3.9 (illustrated)
"When I got to Los Angeles I didn't know a soul. People in New York said You're mad for going there if you don't know anybody and you can't drive...I got into the motel, very thrilled; really, really thrilled, more than in New York the first time. I was so excited. I think it was partly a sexual fascination and attraction...After I'd been there a couple of months, I went to visit some collectors. I'd never seen houses like that. And the way they liked to show them off! They would show you the pictures, the garden, the house....The houses I had seen all had large comfortable chairs, fluffy carpets, striped paintings....As the climate and the openness of houses (large glass windows, patios, etc.) reminded me of Italy, I borrowed a few notions from Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca" (David Hockney, in PICTURES BY DAVID HOCKNEY, selected and edited by Nikos Stangos, p. 36).
Born and raised in the Bradford, England, artist David Hockney was drawn by the openness of American society in the 1960s. Los Angeles, in particular, appealed to his vivacious personality and provided the content for many of his most well-known paintings. Arriving in 1966, the light, colors, and glamorous modern homes of Southern California prompted paintings of pools, interiors, and portraits of lovers. Openly homosexual, Hockney was able to explore his sexuality here, which may have been stifled by English society. In the same year that he painted, The Room, Tarzana, a portrait of his then lover, fellow painter Peter Schlesinger, homosexuality had for the first time become decriminalized in the UK.
Associated with the English Pop Art movement, Hockney resisted such categorization. While he explored the world around him, and particularly the somewhat kitschy realm of Los Angeles' glamorous lifestyle, his formal interests were primarily traditional. IN THE ROOM, TARZANA, he brilliantly married his love of sculptural form, light, and perspective, which he attributed to classical Italian artists, with more modern expanses of bright, unmodulated color resulting in an interesting tension between traditional perspectival depth and the flat surface of the canvas. His move to acrylics, a medium that does not lend itself to the subtle modeling of oils, encouraged a lively competition between colorful, flat monochromatic expanses and the illusion of three-dimensional form. A strong California light illuminating the bedroom from an open window on the right enabled Hockney to explore traditional chiaroscuro effects on modern subjects - his lover Peter, the bed, and side table.
Avoiding the then vogue for pure form, Hockney embarked on a more psychological journey. While large-scale Abstract Expressionist works engage the viewer in a visceral experience prompted by color, gesture, and the physical presence of the canvas, Hockney's figurative penetration into the private space of the bedroom makes the viewer complicit in a voyeuristic enterprise. Just as the large scale of this work and its expanse of flat blues begin to draw the viewer into an experience of pure form, we are caught in the gaze of the artist's lover, staring at his body sprawled out on a bed in a sexually vulnerable position. Peter's shirt and socks remain on, and his facedown body suggests a relaxed but awakened state of readiness. In combination with the slightly tilted perspective and its implication of a lack of breathable air, Hockney enters new territory by forcing a certain psychological tension upon his audience - much different from the more phenomenological experience afforded by pure abstraction.
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