“I have always been affected by the place I am in. London, Paris, L.A, and Yorkshire… the world around me. And all the world’s stage.”
—Hockney
David Hockney’s 1971 French Shop depicts the exterior of a small local food shop in Miers, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, drawn from life while the artist was there to visit a small spa. Hockney depicts a homely, matter-of-fact building, with darkened windows and isometric edges assuming the whole composition. Printed in monochrome, we are made aware of Hockney’s assiduous eye for detail and masterful handling of various techniques. The face of the shop is subsumed in a grey tone fashioned through precise cross-hatching, in front of which Hockney renders a plant with delicate delineation. Contrasted with the hollow darkness of the aquatint windows, Hockney brings to life the otherwise ordinary building through different layering of techniques, creating texture within the ashen greys.
Championing the medium with ease and innovation, Hockney further developed his unique approach to etching in a period of rapid productivity following his split from long-term partner Peter Schlesinger. Hockney immersed himself in printmaking, working from daybreak to sunset, stating: “Whereas with Peter I often went out in the evening, from then on I didn’t. For about three months I was working fourteen, fifteen hours a day. There was nothing else I wanted to do. It was a way of coping with life. It was very lonely.” His artistic output from 1970-71 was prolific. Travelling extensively between Morocco, New York, Japan and France during this period, there is a sense of absence and longing reflected in his printmaking of this time. There is a palpable solemnity in his works that appear devoid of human presence, as if someone had just been – but was now gone. Filmmaker Jack Hazan began to document Hockney’s daily life during this period, including his disintegrating relationship with Schlesinger and his subsequent intensive production in the studio that resulted in the semi-fictionalised A Bigger Splash three years later – a film accompanying Hockney’s monumental painting of 1972 conceived in his period of intense focus, which remains at the forefront of contemporary art today.
