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David Hockney’s “Fax art” Piece Up for Auction
Lorena Muñoz-Alonso
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A piece of David Hockney’s “fax art”, entitled DH at the beach, will be auctioned in a charity auction in Yorkshire in October, Art Daily reports. The event is organized by the Wilberforce Trust, a York charity which supports people with sight loss.
The drawing, an abstract composition of organic lines, was faxed by the English artist from his Malibu home in California to a childhood friend in his hometown of Bradford on the 10th of November 1988. The date and time can be seen clearly on the fax itself.
The donor of the Hockney work, Michael Powell, believes it is a unique piece belonging to a series of eight faxes, which are in the possession of his brother and other family members.
Hockney sent “art faxes” to friends in the late 1980s and early 90s, at the time calling the fax “the wonderful machine, the enemy of totalitarianism, the return of handwritten letters.” Originals of these faxes have fetched considerable sums at auction, even though the artist himself has said they are worthless.
Hockney has always embraced the technology of his time. In 1986, he made a series of works experimenting with Xerox machines and in 2012 the Royal Academy in London held a solo exhibition of large-scale paintings that the artist produced with the help of an iPad.
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