Joe MacDonald, Friends Series (Scottish Arts Council 175)

Notes

From an edition of 99 plus 20 artist's proofs, printed by Serge Lozingot and Edward Henderson, published by Gemini G.E.L, Los Angeles. Produced as a limited edition print for Christie's.

Accompanied by the book, Nikos Stangos (ed) (1979) Pictures by David Hockney, London: Thames & Hudson.

Joe MacDonald was a close friend and frequent model for David Hockney. This artwork belongs to one of the artist’s most intimate and psychologically astute bodies of work, The
Friends Series. This series captures a circle of acquaintances, collaborators, and muses who shaped Hockney’s social and creative milieu during the 1970s. Each portrait is marked by quiet observation rather than theatricality, a distillation of presence rather than performance.

In Joe MacDonald, Hockney portrays the sitter with the precision of a draughtsman and the restraint of a minimalist. The man sits calmly in a rattan chair, rendered in the finest gradations of graphite-like line, his tailored suit and striped tie evoking an almost cinematic stillness. A bottle of Vichy water on the side table, a recurring motif for Hockney, anchors the scene in everyday reality. The sense of air and light, achieved through Hockney’s characteristically sparse use of shading combined with vast negative space, suggests
both physical immediacy and emotional distance.

The Friends Series emerged at a pivotal moment in Hockney’s career, following his move to Los Angeles and his growing fascination with printmaking as an expressive medium. Working with Gemini G.E.L. Printing Studio, he explored lithography with remarkable sensitivity, translating his nuanced understanding of personality and gesture into a language of line and tone. Unlike his earlier, more flamboyant portraits, these works reveal a mature quietude, where psychological insight is achieved through precision and understatement rather than colour or vibrant expression. Joe MacDonald encapsulates the delicate balance at the heart of Hockney’s portraiture: a fusion of formal discipline, emotional subtlety, and human warmth.

^1.Peter Adam (1997) David Hockney and His Friends, Bath: Absolute Press.

Provenance

Estate Late J Jaakke.

Private Collection.

Exhibited

Galerie Lelong, Paris, Portraits, 26 May to 13 July 2018, another example from the edition exhibited.

Literature

Scottish Arts Council (1979) David Hockney Prints 1954-1977, Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, unpaginated, cat. no. 175.