Four Flowers In Still Life
Signed Print

Recalling the style of works such as Table Flowable or the Home Made Prints series, this lithograph aligns with many of the works Hockney was producing in the 90s. Dominated by vibrant contrasting colours, the composition is at once dynamic and flat, the vases of flowers appearing to spill over the edge of the table in this fast moving composition. Swirls of pink and clouds of white marks compete with the wobbly lines of a grid while the red tablecloth the vases sit on dominates the composition in its various sections of colour. Here Hockney is thoroughly pushing the limits of lithography, creating an almost screen print effect that sits at the intersection of figuration and abstraction. The yellow flowers themselves are barely recognisable, though the one on the left could be called a tulip. Amongst all this movement and play between background and foreground, the blue vases act as a kind of anchor in the composition, drawing our eye down and fixing the scene in space with their flat blue surface. It is details like this that mark Hockney as a master printmaker and artist; even when his subject is as straightforward as a still life of flowers he transforms his works into something that becomes increasingly hard to pin down.