A Tune
Signed Print

Composed of many disparate and often surreal elements, A Tune is a classic etching from David Hockney’s The Blue Guitar series in which the artist chose not to illustrate the poems of the same name by Wallace Stevens but instead present works that were “an interpretation of its themes in visual terms. Like the poem, they are about transformations within art as well as the relation between reality and the imagination, so these are pictures and different styles of representation juxtaposed and reflected and dissolved within the same frame”. In this particular etching we find a glass cabinet or table, with strange objects or sculptures arranged on top, which moves away from the traditional still life genre in Hockney’s oeuvre. To the left of the table a fissure appears in space, revealing a brick wall, although this could equally be read as a thin volcano. Further left still, a metal tower topped with mountains and clouds frames the scene. Here Hockney appears to be deliberately playful, experimenting with his new found technique of introducing more than one colour into the etching process to create fantastical scenes that are not constricted by subject matter or themes.