“Hockney? He has immortalised me”
—Celia Birtwell
Celia in the Director’s Chair features one of David Hockney’s closest friends and arguably his most famous muse: Celia Birtwell. Like Hockney, Birtwell was born in the North of England, and she studied textile design at the Royal Technical College in Salford. In 1959, she met Raymond "Ossie" Clark, an up-and-coming fashion designer. The pair were married in London in 1969, with David Hockney in attendance as Clark’s best man. Although Clark initially crossed paths with Hockney in the early 1960s and his likeness first appeared in a Hockney painting titled Domestic Scene, Notting Hill in 1963, it was not until 1969 that Hockney made his first portraits of Celia. In an ink drawing simply titled Celia, Paris, 1969, the 28-year-old Birtwell sits slightly stiffly (out of nervousness, she recalled in retrospect) on a chair in a barely furnished Parisian apartment. Upon meeting, Celia and Hockney immediately formed a special bond, and the British fashion designer has since sat for the artist on more than eighty occasions over the past five decades, most famously in his renowned painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy of 1971. Today, her portrait has become a signature motif within Hockney’s oeuvre, with her likeness as familiar as the swimming pools of Los Angeles or the landscapes of Yorkshire.
Celia in the Director’s Chair demonstrates the strong influence that the linear drawings and prints of early-twentieth century French artists like Henri Matisse had on Hockney’s work. In prints such as Nadia, au visage rond (1948), Matisse depicted his sitter solely through his use of black lines, resulting in a highly simplistic yet captivating portrait. Inspired by the French master, Hockney similarly manages to convey various textures and surfaces through minimal gestures and the occasional use of solid black shapes. In Celia in the Director’s Chair, the differentiation between Celia’s clothing, her hair and the chair she perches on are achieved solely through monochromatic mark making. Her face is constructed using only the most essential lines. Instead of restricting himself to creating an exact likeness in line with the conventions of portraiture, Hockney continuously challenged himself to experiment through his numerous depictions of Celia. In Celia in the Director’s Chair, Hockney investigates how much information is required to capture the essence of his sitter and to convey her likeness. The fluidity of line exemplifies the freedom Hockney discovered in lithography as a medium.
