Blue Hang Cliff
Signed Print

From gestural brushmarks to pointillist dots and spongey blobs, this lithograph by David Hockney represents the full range of the medium and the artist’s ability to push it to its limits. While seemingly abstract at first, the work could also be read as a kind of fantastical or ‘internal landscape’ which the artist first explored when working on the series Some New Paintings and the sets he was commissioned to design for the opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten the year before this print was made, in 1992. Translating to ‘The woman without a shadow’ the opera’s libretto tells a story entangled with the spirit world and mythology. In this work and the other prints from the Some New Prints series we can see this shadowy storytelling take shape in the biomorphic forms that dominate the composition and become the rolling hills of this imagined landscape. Speaking of his intention for the sets, Hockney said he wanted the viewer to ‘wander around’ in the paintings and here we find ourselves following the various paths formed by the converging planes, considering multiple perspectives at once in a way that recalls the experience of viewing Cubist art, which Hockney was also heavily influenced by during this period.