Digging Up Glass
Digging Up Glass
Signed Print
David Hockney
£1,200-£1,800
$2,400-$3,600 Value Indicator
$2,200-$3,300 Value Indicator
¥11,500-¥17,000 Value Indicator
€1,400-€2,050 Value Indicator
$12,500-$19,000 Value Indicator
¥250,000-¥370,000 Value Indicator
$1,600-$2,400 Value Indicator
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11 x 13cm, Edition of 100, Etching
Meaning & Analysis
Digging Up Glass is an etching from 1969 by British artist, David Hockney. This etching depicts a moment when a piece of glass is being crushed under the foot of an anonymous human figure. The triangular forms representing pieces of a broken glass appear scattered at the bottom of the print, showing that half of the glass piece has already been destroyed. With a number of tiny particles floating in the air, the scene represents an active process of demolition, hinting at the implicit aspect of violence symbolised by the situation. Inspired by Brothers Grimm’s Old Rinkrank, the print provides a visual evocation of the main theme of a story about a princess who falls into the glass mountain and is imprisoned by an elderly man Rinkrank.
Hockney commented in the context of Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, his first handmade book of etchings published by the Petersburg Press in association with the Kasmin Gallery in 1970, “I’d always enjoyed the fairy tales very much and thought I'd like to illustrate them, make a book rather like the Cavafy book, taking some of the stories; I'd read them all, about three hundred and fifty.” Similarly to the Cavafy prints, in which the artist experiments with the poem’s subject matter rather than faithfully represents it, the Grimm etchings do not illustrate specific events, but evoke a particular world, atmosphere or trope defining the narrative.