DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)

This etching relates to the painting 'The Most Beautiful Boy in the World'. 'Doll boy', the central character identified by the initials DB wears only a 'baby doll', a style of night-dress popularized by Carroll Baker in the film of the same name. 'Doll Boy was a reference to Cliff Richard, who was very attractive, very sexy... I used to cut out photographs of him from newspapers and magazines and stick them around my little cubicle in the Royal College of Art, partly because other people used to stick up girl pin-ups, and I thought, I'm not going to do that, can't do that, and here's something just as sexy, and I stuck them up. He had a song in which the words were, 'She's a real live walking talking living doll', and he sang it rather sexily...He's referring to some girl, so I changed it to a boy.' (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, p. 63). 'Doll Boy' is further identified in the painting as a fellow student at the Royal College of Art, Peter Crutch. The inclusion of an Alka-Seltzer logo, which gives the etchings its title, playfully suggests the effervescent effect of a youthful infatuation.