One Night
Signed Print

While many of the works in the series Illustrations For Fourteen Poems By C.P. Cavafy by David Hockney show pairs of male lovers in bed, One Night is unique in that the two young men are represented standing up, rather than at rest, among the sheets. The man on the right supports his companion who has his eyes shut and might be drunk, while staring directly at the viewer. He is framed by a bare lightbulb and a set of blinds. As with In the Dull Village the sheets at their feets appear as a rolling landscape of hills, each fold of the fabric becoming a gully or a ridge. The scene is suffused with intimacy and we feel as if we are intruding as the main figure meets our gaze unflinching and unapologetic. This attitude is a stark contrast to the poems that originally inspired the prints in this series, written by Greek poet C.P. Cavafy at the turn of the century when he was forced to conceal his homosexual desire. Published in 1967 these etchings became a bold celebration of gay love and lust, emblematic of the freedom now experienced by queers in the UK where homosexuality had been recently decriminilased.