Mo Asleep

This print was created in 1971 – a year in which David Hockney completed some of his most well-known paintings, such as Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, Portrait Of Sir. David Webster, and Sur La Terrasse. Part of the Erotic Prints series, this work was made in a year which also saw Hockney travel widely, to destinations such as Morocco, Southwest France, Hawaii and even Japan. Despite Hockney’s itinerance during this period, the visible influence of California persists in much of the work produced in what became a crucial time in his artistic career. Mo Asleep is no exception to this. Depicting his long-serving assistant, Mo McDermott, as he sleeps on a patterned deckchair, one cannot help recall the swimming pools which feature in many of Hockney’s most famous works, namely A Bigger Splash (1967). With the bold floral patterns of the deckchair cover lending the piece of furniture a certain prominence, this print omits Mo’s immediate surroundings. A visual reference to travel and relaxation, Mo Asleep partially illuminates Hockney’s life away from the canvas or etching plate, exposing the intimacy of his personal and professional relationship with Mo in the process. Indeed, Hockney once remarked that Mo — one of his most-depicted subjects — was ‘his second greatest fan’.