Still Life (silver flowers)
Signed Print

This charming work shows a simple flower arrangement in a tall beaker paired with a crumpled piece of paper or tissue. The objects sit on a simple black plane, as if a table had been pushed up against a wall. The flowers themselves seem almost like platonic versions of themselves, or what a child draws when they think of flowers, a quintessential daisy or calendula. In this way they also recall the famous flowers by Andy Warhol in their simplicity of line. While stark in terms of light and the angle of the planes of black and white, the work is given a softness with the addition of the flowers’ shadow which appears like a faint grey misting of ink on the wall. And while the composition might feel simple a certain enigma is added by the folded white paper or tissue that sits alongside the vase, as if it were a study of drapery. Dating to 1965 this is one of Hockney’s first lithographs, made just a year into his move to LA, and in this way we can read it as an early experimentation with the medium which would go on to become incredibly important to his printmaking oeuvre.