Comments on: One on One: Frank Smigiel on David Hockney

By: Marc Masurovsky

Marc Masurovsky — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:56:32 +0000

thanks for the commentary. It’s nice to know that the painting is in such a prestigious collection.
I am the son of Shirley and Gregory.
What I have find amusing about the painting is that David reversed my parents’ seating arrangements.
My father sits in my mother’s ‘domain’–her bedroom which also served as our living room, dining room, tea room, breakfast room, tv room, etc….
She is sitting in the open space of the studio, much as she sits in a cafe.
She is the center of attention, not my father.
And so it was, which David understood quite well.
The relation expressed in the painting is the power relationship of their marriage.
And, of course, Sardi Jules de Pixie, my mother’s yorkie given to her by my father as a birthday present in 1970.

Regards,

Marc Masurovsky

By: Steven Trull

Steven Trull — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:07:18 +0000

There is a trash can on the right side of the canvas, makes me wonder.

By: Peter Samis

Peter Samis — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:36:37 +0000

The podcast about Shirley describes their Paris home as a “humble hovel.” Hockney has knocked the walls down and transposed it as a flying stage to his own image of Eden. Another line from the podcast: “She sat in the cafe and waited for her life to begin.” Is that the Shirley we see depicted here, albeit sucked out of Paris and transplanted to the LA garden that Hockney wistfully bestows on his impecunious expat friends?