Meaning & Analysis

This signed photographic print is by renowned and much-loved British artist David Hockney. Issued in an edition of 80 in 1971, it is a photograph capturing Hockney at work: laid out on a desk is his subject – a lemon and two limes – a variety of coloured pencils and a pencil sharpener.

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At Rest is a signed photographic print by British artist David Hockney from 1971. Issued in an edition of 80, this more traditional photographic work contrasts with the artist’s many Photo Collages. Rather than assembling a large number of individual photographs in order to build composite, multifocal images – works Hockney dubbed ‘joiners’ – here the camera looks with intent at one subject: Hockney’s desk. Like Hockney’s many experiments with photography, which began in earnest during the 1980s when a curator left a Polaroid at the artist’s California home by accident, there is more depth to this piece than first meets the eye, however. Testimony to Hockney’s unending fascination with different ways of seeing, At Rest is an image about the process of making images. To the left of the composition, we can see a still life subject – a lemon and two limes; just underneath it is a drawing of the same still life, surrounded by the coloured pencils Hockney has used to make it. As such, At Rest echoes other of the artist’s series, namely A Hollywood Collection and Hockney And The Stage; a self-referential allusion to the artist’s questioning approach towards representation and perspective, it invokes his earlier use of gilded, trompe l’œil frames and theatre drop curtains as a means to create a parodic mise-en-abyme effect.