Red Square And The Forbidden City
Red Square And The Forbidden City
Signed Print
David Hockney
49 x 54cm, Edition of 1000, Screenprint, 1982
£1,850-£2,800
$3,500-$5,500 Market Value Indicator
$3,450-$5,000 Market Value Indicator
¥16,000-¥25,000 Market Value Indicator
€2,200-€3,350 Market Value Indicator
$19,000-$29,000 Market Value Indicator
¥390,000-¥590,000 Market Value Indicator
$2,450-$3,750 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
Red Square And The Forbidden City is a 1982 screenprint by David Hockney, combining a tall patterned panel in blue, green, orange and yellow with a wide, pale expanse scattered with tiny figures. Yellow fronds mark the sides and a yellow column stands at the centre. The work is signed and numbered from an edition of 1,000.
Hockney travelled to China in 1981. The journey produced drawings, photographs and a series of prints that he completed the following year. This work belongs to that group. The title joins two of the most famous public spaces in the country, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.
The composition is unusual, built from two pieces that overlap. At the top, a vertical panel is filled with bold, almost abstract shapes in blue, orange, yellow and green, with a thick green border and a stepped yellow and orange platform at its base. Below, a wide white sheet with a green hedge across it carries only small marks, in rows and clusters, to suggest crowds. A single yellow column stands in the middle. At the bottom edge, a second small platform appears.
The effect is flat and diagrammatic. Space is conveyed by scale and by the contrast between the dense colour of the panel and the emptiness of the ground below.
