But He Did Stop Smoking, He Didn’t Miss Cigarettes at All

Plate 4 from “The Way We Live Now”; 7 etchings by Howard Hodgkin to accompany a text by Susan Sontag. Published in an edition of 200 (with 25 Artist’s proofs, and 7 printer’s proofs). Aquatint, with hand colouring. Hand-coloured and printed by Jack Shirreff. Published by Karsten Schubert, London, 1991

‘The Way We Live Now’ was first published as a short story written by Susan Sontag in the New Yorker in 1986.
It concerns the responses – doubting, possessive, comic – of a group of New Yorkers when they discover a close friend has Aids. Now Howard Hodgkin has created a series of hand-coloured engravings to go alongside the book.
See also, Fear Gives Everything Its Hue, its High, In Touch, Checking In, As You’d Been Wont-Wantonly, Wantonly, Eros Past, The Hospital Room was Choked With Flowers, Everybody Likes Flowers, Surplus Flowers, the Room was Filling up with Flowers