Name: Views Of Hotel Well I
Brand: David Hockney
Rating: 5 (234 reviews)

Meaning & Analysis

This signed print by British artist David Hockney was produced in 1985, it depicts the inner courtyard of the Hotel Acatlan in Mexico. The focal point of the image – a well – gives the print its name. A series of paths wind around the centre of the image in an example of Hockney’s deconstructive approach to perspective.

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View Of Hotel Well I is a signed lithograph print by British artist, David Hockney. Together with View Of Hotel Well II and III, it depicts the inner courtyard of the Hotel Acatlán in Mexico, which Hockney visited in 1984. Casting a multi-perspectival lens over the scene – in this case, his eye – Hockney renders his vision in bright complementary colours. Depicting his static subject exactly how he perceives it, this work recalls another depicting a similar subject matter, the muted piece Mexican Hotel Garden, produced in the previous year. In 1985, Hockney had a new hearing aid fitted. Commenting on its benefits, he once remarked, ‘Music is more alive again and sounds seem spatial, and made me think that over the last years to compensate for my muffled ears I developed a strong visual space sense I say this because I’m very aware I seem to see in another way that has to do with noticing movement of the eye (time) and perception of space’. Certainly, in this print there is both a dynamic musicality to the artist’s choice of colour, and a vibrant, perspective-bending approach to space that is testimony to the artist’s unconventional way of seeing and absorbing the world.