When Peter Blake painted a portrait of his friend David Hockney in 1965, he based it on a photograph. Why? He got on with his fellow Royal College of Art graduate and could have got him to pose. In fact, their relationship was relaxed enough for Hockney to suggest Blake include the male youth in Austrian jacket and shorts who stands behind him – also taken from a photograph.
Hockney, with his round spectacles and bleached hair, looks right at us – or rather at a camera. Blake tries to capture in paint the photo’s harsh light and shadows, contrasting the secondhand, reproduced, even two-dimensional figures of Hockney and the youth with a bunch of balloons that are given a shiny, robust three-dimensional force. By painting a photo of the artist, instead of the artist, Blake suggests distance, mystery, loss. Hockney has become a kind of pop star and doesn’t seem quite real any more. The Bradford-born painting sensation had recently moved to Los Angeles, and it looks like the British-bound Blake is missing him.
