Bora Bora
Signed Print

Inky brushstrokes pick out the movement of clouds in the sky, the waves on the horizon and the lush vegetation of a tropical island, presumably the Bora Bora of the title. The marks are loose, almost Fauvist in style, recalling the work of Henri Matisse. The work reflects a shift in Hockney’s style that is evidenced in this portfolio, which, coming three years after the Friends series, sees him experimenting with more relaxed painterly marks on the lithographic stone. Following the example of Toulouse Lautrec, who was one of the first artists to use lithography to mimic a painterly effect in print, Hockney adopted the method of drawing with a brush dipped in tusche (diluted lithographic ink) which allowed him to work more freely. Bora Bora is the only work in the Tyler Graphics 1979 Portfolio to represent a landscape; the rest of the prints in the series are portraits of Hokcney’s close friends – such as Joe Macdonald and Henry Geldzahler who also feature in the 1976 series – as well as their children. While the work seems like an anomaly it is reflected in the portraits of Macdonald in which he wears a Hawaiian-style shirt in a nod to this Pacific setting.