Hockney at the Opera
Just before this second lockdown began we thought it would be a good idea to pick up as much stock as we could before all the fairs, auctions and everything in between closed their doors and battened down their hatches for a month or maybe more. We’re glad we did as even though the shop, studio and our home are now wildly overflowing with object d’art and oddities, we’ve been kept busy trying to make some space again.
Some pieces patiently wait in line to be photographed, some progress to being uploaded to the website, some wait to be wrapped and sent to their new owners, and then there’s the final category, the pieces which require a little more attention. It might be as simple as deciphering abstract scribbles posing as signatures in the bottom corner of a painting, distinguishing provenance, a good old polish, or sometimes all that’s needed is to find a little bit more about a piece. Sometimes information is passed from owner to owner but sometimes we need to get the magnifying glass out (aka a laptop) and do a bit of digging a la Sherlock Holmes.
You never know when you might stumble across some scandalous history, or better yet something rare...or priceless! Ming vase anyone? (one day…). You can while away many an adrenaline-fuelled hour hungrily hunting down information; sometimes the googling and scrolling gets too much and it’s time to move onto something else for a bit.
When I started researching a poster I picked up from someone’s home in Bristol a couple of weeks ago, it was neither scandalous nor priceless but it was as perfectly engrossing as it was rare and after a so far predictable and simple lockdown, exciting finds like this remind that while we can’t go out and have adventures right now, we can explore zillions of worlds through books and online. If you tap the right domino e.g look in the right places, you can experience a continuum effect of discovering new artists, plays, collaborations, movements, fashion designers, emerging brands and all sorts of wonders, all of which help us to remember there is so much to learn and discover from the comfort of our own homes ( I say this with an end in sight..).
The culprit of this inspirational monologue was a Vintage Poster (below) for an LA Production of Richard Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ Opera With Personalised Inscription From David Hockney himself. What’s that I hear you say? ‘Fun with a capital F!’?
Signed David Hockney Opera Poster. Dating from 1987. Now available to buy in the shop click here to find out more.
So, what did we discover? David Hockney designed the set and costumes for this Opera (Directed by Johnathan Miller) and made paintings for each of the characters. One of which featured on this promotional poster.
Our poster has a wonderfully personal inscription in silver pen ‘For Nikos love from Butchy’.
It then features one of David Hockney’s regular signatures in brackets: ‘Nikos’ in this case it refers to Nikos Stangos, who was a commissioning editor and director at Penguin Books and Thames & Hudson and worked very closely with a number of poets and artists throughout the years and was an influential character in the popular culture of the 20th Century.
I know Stangos and Hockney collaborated professionally but judging by this inscription I would say they were at the very least close friends.
For Richard Wagner’s ‘Tristan Und Isolde’ “Hockney created paintings of assorted opera characters to provide himself with an atmosphere of the drama. Hockney himself developed the dramatic lighting of the extraordinarily painterly backdrops” The David Hockney Foundation.
1” Scale Model, Act I, Final Version from ‘Tristan Und Isolde’, 1987: (Image from the David Hockney Foundation).
1” Scale Model, Act I, Final Version from ‘Tristan Und Isolde’, 1987 (Image from the David Hockney Foundation).
“The opera opens on board a sailing ship, moves to a road between a castle and a wood and winds up with everyone dying at great length on a cliff over the ocean in Cornwall. For each scene Hockney employed a floor so sharply angled it seemed to affect the movement of singers. Isolde (Jeannine Altmeyer) had some formidably heavy dresses to lug about and seemed to alternate between lurching and tippy-toeing to maintain balance. In the third act, it was not quite clear whether Tristan (William Johns) was clinging to life or to the floor for fear of rolling off.”
- WILLIAM WILSON DEC. 8, 1987 Los Angeles Times
Act III, Final Version from ‘Tristan Und Isolde’ (Alternate lighting 5) 1987: (Image from the David Hockney Foundation).