An Image Of Ken

In this experimental portrait, the human face appears disfigured as Hockney deliberately violates the sense of symmetry and proportion in his rendition of the facial features. The man’s chin is turned towards the telephone receiver on the left-hand side of the picture. The eyes, nose, and forehead, turned in the opposite direction, outgrow the unfinished facial contour that appears below. The perspective, overall, creates a sense of disorientation. As the two incompatible facial shapes overlap, their various features vie for the viewer’s attention, making it difficult to single out one central characteristic. Hockney commented on his experiments with perspective in the late 1980s: ”In a way, what I have been trying to move away from is a fixed viewpoint. That kind of line drawing on the whole works because you feel it’s accurate, you feel the line has got the volume, or the line has got the person. The line is doing all the work. The viewer knows that. And somehow the way the line is used there I feel I’ve explored. I’d rather explore it another way now.“