Twelve Fifteen

Twelve Fifteen is a signed print by internationally renowned British artist, David Hockney. Like much of Hockney’s work, it owes much to the unrelenting influence of Cubism – a Modernist artistic movement of which Pablo Picasso, one of Hockney’s art heroes, was a major proponent – upon the artist’s wider œuvre. Although it makes considered use of non-representational forms and garish, often clashing colours (as in the lower portion of the composition), Twelve Fifteen remains rooted in a unique and decidedly unorthodox depiction of reality. Testament to Hockney’s diverse ‘ways of seeing’, it gives us a sense of being constituted of various aspects of a traditional landscape work. On the one hand, the print is organic: deep emerald evokes pasture, whilst fragments of a rainbow and even a sun can be seen in the work’s upper portions. On the other, rigid, man-made forms puncture the work’s flamboyant texture, giving the illusion of the many skyscrapers of Los Angeles and California – Hockney’s home for over 30 years. Whilst portraying an indeterminate subject matter, what is sure is that much like Hockney’s Photo Collages, there is a compositeness to this work which challenges the limitations of traditional, unifocal art. Cross-hatched sections separate an unadorned white background from the vibrant, multicolour forms that make up the work, suggesting its use as a kind of façade or stage set much like those the artist went on to create for a November 1992 run of Strauss’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten at London’s Royal Opera.