David Hockney’s iPad Drawings of Winter’s Transformation Into Spring Blow Past Estimates at Auction
Seventeen works from the artist’s 2011 series went for more than $8 million at a Sotheby’s sale on October 17
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A collection of drawings by David Hockney sold for millions last week at a Sotheby’s London auction—and they were all made on an iPad.
In the midst of London’s Frieze Week, 17 works from Hockney’s The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate series flew past estimates, with individual sales totaling £6.2 million (more than $8 million). That was almost four times the low estimate for the collection, which was £1.7 million (around $2.3 million).
Known for painting Los Angeles swimming pools and large-scale double portraits, the 88-year-old English artist took up drawing on an iPad soon after the device was first released, in 2010, and began using it to depict landscapes in in East Yorkshire, England, the following year. Initially, he had wanted to capture winter’s transformation into spring through paintings, but bringing an easel outside proved “a bit difficult when you are stood out there in the winter,” he said, per Sotheby’s. So he decided to capture the seasonal transition by drawing it on his iPad.
Quick fact: David Hockney’s double portraits
The artist is famous for his series of seven large-scale double portraits, the first of which is heading to auction in November.
Over the course of five months, Hockney drew 94 works, according to the auction house, 61 of which can be viewed on his website. They went on display the following year in a blockbuster show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Initially, the drawings were met with mixed reviews, but they’ve since become a staple in his oeuvre. Recently, some of the drawings went on display alongside his paintings at the massive retrospective “David Hockney 25,” which took place at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris earlier this year.
“At a time when digital art was often dismissed, Hockney proved it could rival painting and printmaking in depth, expression and emotional power,” says Sotheby’s in a statement. “The Arrival of Spring is more than a celebration of Yorkshire—it’s an invitation to see the world anew, to notice the rhythm of growth, light and renewal that surrounds us.”
Taken together, the 17 drawings that went under the hammer showcase the full spectrum of winter turning into spring. Some drawings show barren branches, while others have snow piling up on the sides of roads. Yet others feature blooming flowers and lush, green trees.
Auctioning iPad prints is rare for Sotheby’s, head of prints Yessica Marks tells the Guardian’s Mark Brown.
“To put it into context, in nearly a decade at Sotheby’s worldwide we’ve only sold 24 iPad drawings by Hockney and only half of them are from this series,” Marks tells the Guardian. “So to see 17 in one auction is unprecedented and something the market has never witnessed.”
Hockney has long been interested in creatively incorporating technology into his visual art. In the 1980s, he experimented with making collages out of individual polaroid pictures, which all came together in one composite image. He’s also made art from fax machines and color photocopiers, reports Artnet’s Richard Whiddington.
But even as Hockney’s mediums change, some of the fundamental questions propelling his art stay the same, Marks says.
“Hockney’s iPad drawings are, in many ways, a modern sketchbook,” Marks tells Artnet. “He uses the iPad [to] explore the same timeless questions of light, time and perception that have occupied artists for centuries. It shows that technology doesn’t replace the hand; it simply gives it new ways to draw.”
The iPad has continued to capture Hockney’s fascination as an artistic tool. Next year, iPad creations from his time in Normandy, France, will be exhibited at a show at London’s Serpentine gallery.