David Hockney
English, born 1937

American Collectors, 1968

Acrylic on canvas
213.4 x 304.8 cm (83 7/8 x 120 in.)
Restricted gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Pick, 1984.182

David Hockney is an English artist who was an early and important part of the London Pop scene. Hockney visited Los Angeles in 1964 and settled there in 1976. Of the numerous double-portraits he executed in the late 1960s, this image of Fred and Marcia Weisman has come to epitomize American art collectors. With his business suit, rigid pose, and clenched fist, Fred Weisman seems as stony as the William Turnbull sculpture before him. Marcia Weisman faces the viewer frontally like the Henry Moore sculpture to the left, whose contours she shares, and her mouth echoes the totem pole to the right. Brilliant California light unites the composition, rather than any affinity between the collectors, who seem oblivious to each other and their art.