“They’re a bit mind boggling, but they are meant to be. The viewer can roam freely within them, finding his or her own space. That’s why there are no figures in them. You construct you own space mentally.”
—David Hockney
David Hockney’s Gorge d’Incre, from Some More New Prints, of 1993 is an experimental investigation into the nature of seeing. Swelling waves of textured patterns undulate across the page, teasing the eye into thinking it sees something discernable before dissolving into a compounding mass of pulsing colour and movement. In this highly stylised depiction of California, the planes and patterns unfurl to create a surreal spatial arrangement, both atmospheric and ambiguous.
Combining different viewpoints into a single composition is emblematic of Hockney’s attuned sense of perspective, and more specifically, his rejection of Western single-point perspective. For Hockney, single-point perspective was a limited, constrictive way of communicating our experience of the world around us, which he likens to “looking at the world from the point of view of a paralysed Cyclops.” Instead, the artist synthesises an amalgamation of hills, ravines and plains all at once, plucking from his mind certain memories revived with singular artistic imagination. The resulting image is a dynamic whirlwind of hallucinogenic figurations reflecting the meandering natural vista, balancing reality with fiction.
In the early 1990s Hockney turned his attention towards set design – a creative decision that would preoccupy his practice for several years and would influence his other artistic output; most notably, his prints. This built upon his previous operatic projects, notably Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, which premiered at Glyndebourne festival, East sussex, in 1975 and drew on his eponymous 1961-3 suite of etchings. Years later, working with assistant Richard Schmidt, the artist continued to explore lighting and design models for various operatic performances, a significant example being Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in 1992. Hockney began to create abstract landscapes; his brightly coloured sets were illuminated by different light sources and through layering back-lit silhouettes and other textural components he manipulated perspective in front of a live audience. While the artist had no interest in becoming a permanent theatre designer, who in his eyes, “takes direct orders. I wasn’t willing to do that…”, the artist enjoyed the collaborative nature of working with different professionals – from sound specialists to costume designers – having been given reasonable free reign to explore the full potential of abstract landscape in three-dimension.
Described by the Los Angeles Times as “…like a symphony that constantly reinvents its own harmonics”, the abstracted landscape of Hockney’s Some More New Prints series echo his experimental operatic designs, a bold display of technical and observational virtuosity. The artist recognised that we see both geometrically and psychologically, subverting what the eye expects through sensuous line and colour. In this way, Gorge d’Incre balances abstraction with various tropes of traditional landscape painting, lending his audience a momentary glance into Hockney’s extraordinary artistic vision.
