David Hockney’s 'Breakfast with Stanley in Malibu', is a unique mixed-media print made from 49 individual parts, created using a Xerox photocopier, assembled to form a single, dynamic composition. The segmented format reflects Hockney’s interest in multiple perspectives which he has explored throughout his career. Hockney invites viewers to visually reconstruct the image as they explore it.

The Xerox works are a brilliant example of Hockney’s constant push to experiment with new technologies. In the mid-1980s, he became fascinated by the creative potential of the photocopier, in particular its ability to merge painterly and photographic qualities in a fast and flexible way. Starting in February 1986, he began using a friend’s Xerox machine to explore this new medium, which offered him his most immediate and spontaneous printmaking process to date.

Hockney wasn’t alone in this experimentation, both Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat used the medium in the late 1980s to cement the ties between art and commercial culture. Unlike traditional print studios, which required Hockney to arrive fully prepared with little room for improvisation, the Xerox copier gave him the freedom to build images intuitively, layer by layer. Each colour or drawn element was composed separately, then reassembled through repeated scans and tweaks on the copier bed. Hockney saw the machine not just as a tool, but as a kind of modern camera, allowing him to explore the relationship between technology and vision in entirely new ways.

This inventive process, part drawing, part photography, part collage, reflects Hockney’s lifelong interest in how we see and depict the world. From embracing photography in the 1980s to painting on iPads in the 2010s, Hockney has always been ahead of his time and the Xerox works are an important milestone in his ever-evolving exploration of image making.