1.8 Listening

Now if you follow me through into the next room, we come to a far more modern piece of work, dating in fact from 1971.

On the surface, this may strike you as a fairly conventional, life-like portrait. To the left, there's a young woman standing in front of an open door, and looking directly at the viewer, whilst to the right there's a young man sitting in a chair, with a white cat seated on his lap, pointedly looking away. Through the open door, we can see a balcony and beyond that the green garden of their town house.

There are some flowers in a vase on the table, next to a book, and there's a phone and a lamp on the floor. Finally, to the very left of the picture, we see part of an abstract painting hanging on the wall.

However, beneath all of this, the work is actually a very ambiguous, multi-layered piece, heavy with symbolic meaning and with history. Called Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy and painted by David Hockney, the work was recently voted one of Britain's top-10 favorites and a knowledge of the behind-the-scenes story might help to explain some of the tension and drama in a piece which continues to fascinate us.

The couple in the painting are textile designer Celia Birtwell and fashion designer Ossie Clark, shortly after their wedding, at which the artist himself had been the best man. The piece is loosely based on the 15th century work, the Arnolfini portrait, by Jan van Eyck, but the positions of the male and female characters have been reversed. The suggestion is perhaps that it was Mrs. Clark who was the dominant partner in this particular relationship.

The lilies on the table represent female purity, while the cat on Mr. Clark's lap symbolizes infidelity and jealousy. The roots of this symbol lie in the fact that Mr Clark had frequent affairs both before and during their five-year marriage.

This played a part in the couple's eventual divorce three years later, and may explain part of the friction that seems apparent between the two sitters. We have the feeling that we have suddenly interrupted an intimate moment - a heated discussion, perhaps - and are not exactly welcome.

As a footnote, sadly Ossie Clark later fell into bankruptcy and addiction, and his life ended tragically when he was murdered by an ex-lover in 1996, a fact which lends a disturbing edge to the portrait. Celia Birtwell, meanwhile, continued to be one of Hockney's regular models for many years, and to this day remains a successful designer.