Christopher Isherwood Talking To Bob Holman
Christopher Isherwood Talking To Bob Holman
Signed Print
David Hockney
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110 x 162cm, Edition of 20, Photographic print
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Meaning & Analysis
Created by David Hockney in 1983, Christopher Isherwood Talking To Bob Holman is a signed photographic print that belongs to a series of photo collages termed by the artist as ‘Joiners’. By arranging visually striking sequences of images in joiners, Hockney gives expression to his long standing curiosity about questions of perspective and space.
Instead of a single, static likeness of the sitter, the print presents the viewer with a mosaic of pictures displaying subtle changes in gestures, facial expressions, and bodily language of each person in the room. Taken in quick succession, the photographic images multiply the point of view and invite the viewer’s gaze to scan the collage from side to side, up and down, in search of an anchor point. Singling out a central characteristic of the image and fixing gaze on one feature becomes impossible given the expansive, movement-oriented nature of the composition.
On the left side, the constellation of overlapping hand shots that see Bob Holman writing, holding a cup of coffee or touching his chin, is designed for our eyes to move in circles. As the dense amalgamation of images continues through the centre up to the right side, our eyes travel the collage’s full length from left to right in order to follow individual gestures of each sitter. What follows as a result is the impression of witnessing how the scene progresses from one frame to another. Because the difference between images within each corner of the collage is subtle, scanning them quickly seems to put the human figures and their bodily language in motion.