Hockney, David. JOE MCDONALD. Scottish Arts Council 175. Gemini DH76-767. Lithograph in two blacks, 1976. Done in crayon on both a stone and an aluminum plate. Edition of 99, plus 32 Artist's Proofs. Signed, numbered, and dated in blue pencil. Printed on Arches paper, and published by Gemini GEL, Los Angeles, with their blindstamp. From Hockney's "Friends" series. 41 1/2 x 29 3/4, 1054 x 756 mm., the full sheet. In excellent condition. Joe McDonald was a friend of Hockney's who lived in New York, and worked as a model. Hockney, writing about the death of his father, and others in an article in the Independent in 1993, says McDonald was the first person he knew who had aids, and that he was 32 when he died in 1983. Hockney did the portraits for Friends directly on stone, with the subject posing in the Genini G.E.L. studio on Melrose Avenue in LA for three days to a week. "I take a rather old-fashioned view of a print: you should actually draw it." (Hockney, quoted in Ruth Fine, Gemini G.E.L. - Art and Collaboration). "'Til then we had never really seen a traditional artist [who] would draw in that way." "He just knocked us out." (Gemini collaborators, quoted by Fine in the above-cited book).
