Meeting The Other People
Signed Print

Meeting The Other People offers an interesting counterpoint to the work entitled Meeting The Good People from this series. While the earlier work from Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress shows the artist paying (perhaps insincere) homage to the great political heroes of american history, here we see him encountering ‘ordinary people’, as represented by the figure on the right who wears the t-shirt of a popular radio station. Hockney’s figure stands close to him, characteristically in profile to the viewer, at the bottom of a large set of stairs, similar to those in another earlier print, The Wallet Begins to Empty. While he has reached the end of his downfall, he appears to be offering a message of hope and companionship, where before there was only melancholy and isolation. As if to underscore this, the blob of red ink which previously alternated between cloud and stain has resolved into a sun and a small shrub or tree lies at the feet of the right hand figure as if to signify new life. The figures that originally banished the artist down the stairs are nowhere to be seen, as is the serpent from Cast Aside that threatened to eat him.