LOVE’S PRESENTATION AKA FOURTEEN POEMS OF CP CAVAFY CHOSEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID HOCKNEY

UK | 1966 | black and white | 27 mins
Credits:

Production Company: Maya Film Productions Ltd

Sponsor: Allan Power

Cinematographer: Adam Barker-Mill

Editor: Barney Platts-Mills

Commentary: Jasia Reichardt, David Hockney

Etchings published by Editions Alecto

David Hockney had already built a significant reputation for himself when James Scott made this exploratory documentary. Leaving Bradford for London and the Royal College of Art in 1959, he quickly began exhibiting widely in fashionable, critical circles, and infiltrated other media. He danced an energetic frug in Ken Russell’s BBC TV documentary Pop Goes the Easel* (1962) in the Monitor strand, and later appeared as an ace face, offering thoughts and comments, in Peter Whitehead’s ode to the swinging capital, Let’s All Make Love in London (1967).
Scott’s film, by way of contrast, removes the artist from the hype of the time and implicitly complicates Hockney’s reputation as a Pop artist, a label he himself resisted anyway. The book of 14 poems by Cavafy that Hockney has selected for illustration here combines the processes of mass reproduction, by way of a printing press with the more traditional, artisanal processes of aquatinting, which Hockney discusses, and systematically demonstrates. Printing plates are prepared, lines are inscribed carefully, and then the images are fixed and washed by way of numerous baths.


In keeping with much of James Scott’s work, process and an openness to reflection are pushed to the forefront. Hockney, for example, speaks over the film, explaining the processes of etching and aquatinting, but he also comments anecdotally on the footage, highlighting that he is in fact looking at the film in much the same way we are. ‘I’m just wiping dust off the wax there,’ he says and he later makes light-hearted remarks about his trousers when they change suddenly; an unusual moment (or moments – it happens more than once) in a sequential, illustrative narrative that otherwise flows seamlessly. Also, film is reproducible, like an artist print, and Love’s Presentation implicitly highlights this, raising questions about its own status as an art object.

LOVE’S PRESENTATION AKA FOURTEEN POEMS OF CP CAVAFY CHOSEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID HOCKNEY UK | 1966 | black and white | 27 mins Credits: Production Company: Maya Film Productions Ltd Sponsor: Allan Power Cinematographer: Adam Barker-Mill Ed

LOVE’S PRESENTATION AKA FOURTEEN POEMS OF CP CAVAFY CHOSEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID HOCKNEY

UK | 1966 | black and white | 27 mins
Credits:

Production Company: Maya Film Productions Ltd

Sponsor: Allan Power

Cinematographer: Adam Barker-Mill

Editor: Barney Platts-Mills

Commentary: Jasia Reichardt, David Hockney

Etchings published by Editions Alecto

David Hockney had already built a significant reputation for himself when James Scott made this exploratory documentary. Leaving Bradford for London and the Royal College of Art in 1959, he quickly began exhibiting widely in fashionable, critical circles, and infiltrated other media. He danced an energetic frug in Ken Russell’s BBC TV documentary Pop Goes the Easel* (1962) in the Monitor strand, and later appeared as an ace face, offering thoughts and comments, in Peter Whitehead’s ode to the swinging capital, Let’s All Make Love in London (1967).
Scott’s film, by way of contrast, removes the artist from the hype of the time and implicitly complicates Hockney’s reputation as a Pop artist, a label he himself resisted anyway. The book of 14 poems by Cavafy that Hockney has selected for illustration here combines the processes of mass reproduction, by way of a printing press with the more traditional, artisanal processes of aquatinting, which Hockney discusses, and systematically demonstrates. Printing plates are prepared, lines are inscribed carefully, and then the images are fixed and washed by way of numerous baths.


In keeping with much of James Scott’s work, process and an openness to reflection are pushed to the forefront. Hockney, for example, speaks over the film, explaining the processes of etching and aquatinting, but he also comments anecdotally on the footage, highlighting that he is in fact looking at the film in much the same way we are. ‘I’m just wiping dust off the wax there,’ he says and he later makes light-hearted remarks about his trousers when they change suddenly; an unusual moment (or moments – it happens more than once) in a sequential, illustrative narrative that otherwise flows seamlessly. Also, film is reproducible, like an artist print, and Love’s Presentation implicitly highlights this, raising questions about its own status as an art object.

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