“It is not about a hotel, but about an attitude to space”.
—David HockneyHotel Acatlan: Second Day is comprised of two large-scale lithographs that together create a panoramic view of the Hotel Romano Angeles in Acatlán, Mexico. In its dynamic representation of space, Hotel Acatlán: Second Day is emblematic of Hockney’s extensive investigations during the 1980s into perspective and the depiction of space. 

In February 1984, Hockney travelled from California to Mexico City for the opening of his solo exhibition Hockney Paints the Stage at the Museo Rufino Tamayo. Upon his return, his car broke down and the artist decided to make a stop at the nearby Hotel Romano Angeles. Hockney was captivated by the hotel’s tropical interior courtyard, especially the angles and various viewpoints that one can look at it from. As he wrote in a letter to his friend and fellow artist, R.B. Kitaj, “the effect of the space is extremely strong, yet it is not an illusion you want to walk into, because you are already in the picture and walking around”.ⁱ Hockney drew many quick sketches of the hotel before travelling back to Los Angeles, where he completed a monumental oil painting entitled A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlán composed across two canvases. In September 1984, Hockney returned to the Hotel Romano Angeles, this time with his close friend Kenneth Tyler, the master printmaker. During their one-week stay at the hotel, Hockney worked on six lithographic prints of the hotel’s courtyard, including Hotel Acatlán: Second Day. 
“Renaissance European perspective has a vanishing point, but it does not exist in Japanese and Chinese painting. And a view from sitting still, from a stationary point, is not the way you usually see landscape; you are always moving through it.”
—David HockneyHotel Acatlán: Second Day is emblematic of Hockney’s attuned sense of perspective and, in particular, his rejection of Western single-point perspective. Following the work of Filippo Brunelleschi in c.1415, artists during the Renaissance began devising compositions that employed orthogonals, especially in architectural features, that converge at a single vanishing point to accurately convey space. Hockney, however, feels that compositions with multiple viewpoints or non-linear perspective, such as in traditional Chinese and Japanese manuscripts or in modern Cubist artworks, much more closely resemble how one naturally sees. When at the Hotel Acatlán, Hockney moved around the inner courtyard, making sketches from different positions and then combining the different viewpoints into one composition. Straight architectural features, such as the roof and paths, are rendered in curved lines and the diminution of shapes varies throughout the composition. As a result, the space is dynamic and the multiple perspectives convey movement and the passing of time, creating the sense that the viewer is walking through the courtyard together with Hockney.

 

To produce the lithographs, Hockney utilised an innovative printing technique developed by Tyler in the 1980s. Using bright inks and crayons, Hockney drew directly onto a booklet of transparent Mylar sheets, which allowed him to form the composition in situ whilst also creating the separations of colour which would later be used for the different layers of the print. Once finalised, the Mylar sheets were transferred to forty-eight aluminium plates and printed at Tyler’s workshop in Bedford Village, New York. When describing Hockney’s approach to print-making, Tyler said: “David has always had a keen sense of process and a knack for bypassing established methodologies to arrive at previously undiscovered uses for new materials and techniques.” In the present lot, this innovative approach to printmaking is combined with the artist's groundbreaking use of multiple perspectives. The result is a dynamic composition that truly embodies the central themes of Hockney's oeuvre. 


ⁱ David Hockney in a letter to friend R.B. Kitaj, A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlán, Hockney: The Biography, p. 209