Tick It, Tock It, Turn It True
Signed Print

Featuring many of the objects and motifs that run throughout the whole series of prints entitled The Blue Guitar, Tick It, Tock It, Turn It True is a familiarly enigmatic scene by David Hockney. A chair sits at some distance from a table upon which rests a bowl of fruit. But rather than presenting the traditional interior or still life view we have come to expect from Hockney’s oeuvre, the artist subverts the normality of the scene with the introduction of a fragmented figure, a strange grid like object and the inclusion of a curtain which adds a theatrical dimension to the composition. Rendered in soft blue and red tones the work shows most of all Hockney’s mastery of the sugar lift aquatint technique which he had only recently begun using in his etching thanks to a period of time spent with master printer Aldo Crommelynck who had worked closely with Picasso, the artist who originally inspired Wallace Stevens to write his Blue Guitar poem which in turn inspired Hockney to create this series of prints. While many of the prints in the portfolio contain overt references to Picasso and Stevens, here the subject matter remains veiled and ambiguous.