David Hockney’s ‘Beverly Hills Housewife’ for sale at Christie’s

“I’m always interested in the new, and don’t understand why everybody isn’t. I like contemporary painting, furniture,architecture. So of course I like contemporary music…I like complexity, challenge, ambiguity, abstraction.” BettyFreeman, Interview with The New York Times, 1998

March 24, 2009 – Christie’s is pleased to offer a selection of works from the Collection of Betty Freemanin the May 13 Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Leading the selection is one of themost important works to come to the auction market by David Hockney, Beverly Hills Housewife,(estimate: $7-10 million), 1966-1967. The Evening Sale selection of works from the collectioncomprises 19 lots and is estimated at $26-40 million.

Laura Paulson, Deputy Chairman and International Director of Post-War and Contemporary Artstated: “Betty Freeman’s deep commitment to the arts was demonstrated by a lifetime of indefatigable dedication andpassionate support. David Hockney’s epic Beverly Hills Housewife is one of the artist’s most fascinating andiconic works and remains a perfect, timeless tribute to Freeman, a modern-day Medici, who will be remembered as an influential patron of our contemporary culture.”

A diptych measuring twelve feet long and six feet high, David Hockney’s Beverly Hills Housewifedepicts a 1960’s California housewife standing on the patio of her well-appointed home. Thepainting’s modernist setting is testament to the refined and minimalist sensibilities of the subject,who is none other than Freeman herself. Having recently arrived in Los Angeles, the British artistasked Freeman if he could come to her house and paint the swimming pool in her backyard for aseries that would become famously representative of his oeuvre, the ‘California Dreaming’ series.Upon arriving, Hockney decided to focus the work on Freeman, immediately finding that she, likemany Los Angeles residents he had met, was very much a function of the space that she existed in,and the space that she existed in was very much a function of her.

Infused with pervasive and powerful silence, Beverly Hills Housewife not only captures the artist’sdetached fascination with the California landscape, it also demonstrates his predilection for scenesbathed in crisp light and hyper-real colors, a distinct departure from the work being created byHockney’s Post-War British counterparts at the time. Painted between 1966-1967, the work depictsa tanned, sculptural Freeman in bright pink dress standing on her covered patio. Hockney addedthe antelope trophy head on the wall to create a deliberately humorous face-off between theFreeman and fictional character.influential patron of our contemporary culture.”