The Non-presence of People in David Hockney's Paintings of ...

REVITAL SILVERMAN
origin – indeed an unavoidable veil… The origin keeps itself concealed in the
beginning’. 26
The above discussed image of people in Hockney’s work, from full presence
till total disappearance, reminds us (as do the solitary figures in Cézanne’s
and Mendieta’s works) Heidegger’s notion of Presence that is not itself
something in the present but rather 'the wholeness of life, achieved only in
death, when we are no longer ‘there’. 27 It is thus, in the words of Susan Best,
‘not through our presence, but through our passing, that we are finally
individuated and complete’. 28
The art collectors and the diver, though not seen, are like the white stripe -
the frame; they are present in another space, a third space, a twilight zone, a
place in between; a space that is made possible by the lack of acceptance of
binarity; a place where things are disconnected and are not self-evident.
Notes
1. Edelman 1984: 25-26 (quoted in Terence Riley1999:9).
2. Hockney returned to this theme in the eighties, but now to panoramic images of
houses whose access is by narrow serpentine roads, based upon the drive from his
house in Hollywood Hills to his studio in Santa Monica. In this article I refer to the
earlier paintings only.
3. Hockney 1976:125.
4. Weber 1991: 167.
5. Goffman 1974:21-22.
6. Heinich 1993: 52-58.
7. Ibid., p.54.
8. Kant 1951: 61-62.
9. Derrida 1987: 37-81.
10. Krauss 1985: 15-17.
11. Lefebvre 1991: 27-30.
12. Wright 1901: p.17 (quoted in Riley 1999:14).
13. Gordon 1953: 129.
14. Barry 1953: 270 (quoted in Riley 1999: 15).
15. Davies 1966: M.Davies “Fortress L.A”, in: The City Reader, London and New York
1996 (1990): 159-160.
16. Hockney 1976: 124-125.
17. In opposition to the early works in which Hockney deals with frozen time; in later
works he deals with painting landscapes on the road. The frozen splash can be
related with Japanese prints from the 19th century, for example: Beneath the Wave
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