Franco-American Mail
Franco-American Mail
Signed Print
David Hockney
46 x 53cm, Edition of 200, Etching, 1977
£1,900-£2,850
$3,600-$5,500 Market Value Indicator
$3,550-$5,500 Market Value Indicator
¥17,000-¥26,000 Market Value Indicator
€2,200-€3,300 Market Value Indicator
$20,000-$30,000 Market Value Indicator
¥400,000-¥590,000 Market Value Indicator
$2,550-$3,850 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
Allegorical and reference-laden, Franco-American Mail (1977) by David Hockney is a soft-ground etching divided into nine rectangles, each containing up to three evocative images. Direct allusions to Wallace Stevens’ poem The Man With The Blue Guitar (1937) are found at the centre of the print and in the upper right edge, where subtle outlines of a guitar body feature. Hockney’s departure from naturalism around 1975 is said to have been inspired by the discovery of Stevens’ poem during a holiday on Fire Island. In it, the American poet explores the image of a man who ‘do[es] not play things as they are’. The central idea of The Man With The Blue Guitar is imaginative freedom, bringing to the forefront of art the subjective experience of reality rather than striving for a single, realistic viewpoint. The image of a pipe next to abstract human faces on the right side of the print reminds one of Rene Magritte’s famous painting The Treachery Of Images (1929), further reinforcing the link between art and the private world of imagination.
The images included in the print are rendered mostly in red and blue, a combination described by Hockney as ‘the colours of Matisse’. Exhibiting simple contour lines and a flat, poster-like depiction of abstract forms, the print, indeed, remains in a strong dialogue with the legacy of Henri Matisse at the same time as making overt references to the work of Pablo Picasso through the evocation of Stevens’ poem. Considering its multilayered nature, the print can be seen as Hockney’s homage to the artists who challenged the conventional ways of seeing and significantly shaped his own vision of art.
