Wind
Signed Print

Depicting a sign for Melrose Avenue, one of the most famous streets in LA, Wind is a resolutely west coast work. Gone is the greyness of Hockney’s earliest prints, here all is bathed in the white light of california. Sheets of paper fly up in a gust of wind, revealing themselves to be reproductions of the other prints in the series, such as Sun, Snow, Mist and Rain. This charming composition is also an homage to Hokusai’s Ejiri in the Suruga Province (a work that would also later be referenced by photographer Jeff Wall), a work he was strongly influenced by, along with many other prints by Hokusai’s contemporary Hiroshige, upon his visit to Japan in 1971. Here Hockney has taken this traditional Ukiyo-e print and subverted it, putting his own contemporary spin on it, and having a joke with the viewer at the same time. As is fitting for a work entitled Wind the piece is suffused with lightness and air, a feeling that is deftly translated from drawing to lithograph and screen print by Hockney with the help of master printers Gemini G.E.L. The lightness of the paper and the gust is contrasted however, with the heavy green of the road sign which anchors the composition and prevents the work from slipping into whimsy.