Hockney’s new paintings are delving further into the imagery of romantic and sexual intimacy, of couples observed in domestic interiors, or in shower scenes. Among these are: The Second Marriage, a shaped canvas suggesting a cube or boxed-in space, with seated bride and groom; [NESTED]Domestic Scene, Notting Hill, in which Hockney’s close friends Ossie Clark and Mo McDermott pose; and Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, based on a shot of two men found in the magazine Physique Pictorial (Hockney has not yet visited L.A.).

Hockney is also exploring the theme of pictorial illusion, strikingly in Play within a Play. Toying with the pictorial conceit perfected by the Baroque artist Domenichino (Italian, 1581–1641) of painting the image of a tapestry, Play within a Play shows Hockney’s dealer, John Kasmin, standing before a tapestry but[NESTED] behind a glass surface. He raises his hands against the glass, which seems to separate him from the viewer—as if he is caught on the other side, within the image itself.

After two years of work, Hockney completes A Rake’s Progress, and the sixteen etchings are published in an edition of 50 by Editions Alecto. In the Times, Bryan Robertson calls them “a total success: edgy placing of images, a fastidiously dry sense of the juxtaposition of black and white and a highly individual formal sense, wiry but not untender, drive home at a spanking pace the up-to-date whimsically autobiographical version of the Rake’s Progress morality tale, based here on the artist’s own escapades in America.” [NESTED]The influence of Hogarth will become increasingly significant with the 1975 production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

The Sunday Times commissions Hockney to travel to Egypt in October, where he makes numerous drawings for publication on November 24. They are never published due to the paper’s coverage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination days prior. 

Hockney’s vision of Egypt—captured in a painting of the Great Pyramid at Giza made subsequently in his studio—debuts at his first solo exhibition at Kasmin’s gallery in London, David Hockney: Pictures with People In. His title for the show emphasizes his unique position on Kasmin’s roster as the only artist working with the figure. The critically acclaimed show sells out. 

He takes off for New York at the end of the year. There, he meets Andy Warhol and Dennis Hopper, and begins what will become an enduring friendship with Henry [NESTED]Geldzahler, Curator of Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.