Mo Asleep,

1971

A leading British Pop artist, David Hockney executed this tender portrait using the technique known as hard-ground etching: a special coating is applied to the metal plate, which the artist then engraves using a needle stylus. This method produces a clean and deliberate line, similar to a pen and ink drawing, a visual effect that contrasts here with the gentle, dreamy mood of the work. Hockney’s assistant, the painter and sculptor Mo McDermott, slumbers on a lounge chair, possibly beside a pool. The portrait revisits the long-established theme of sleeping nudes, a genre that often depicts fi gures from classical mythology—the goddess Diana, the Amazon queen Antiope—watched by male observers. Hockney tweaks that convention by drawing Mo alone, implying that the artist’s gaze is the purest form of voyeurism.