A Bigger Splash, 1967
David Hockney (1937- is one of the
most important representatives of British Pop Art. His move to
California at the beginning of the 1960s inspired him to paint a
number of swimming: pool pictures. In a series of calm, almost
static, snapshot-like views, they evoke an effulgent, laid-back
atmosphere that, in this example, is disturbed by "a bigger
splash The picture, precisely constructed from photographs, is
painted in acrylics with bright even areas of color. The splash was
added subsequently in impasto. There are no human figures in this
uncannily peaceful scene (apart from the swimmer, of course, who is
not visible). The landscape, too, is merely a backdrop of secondary
importance to a scene of hedonistic leisure culture. The house and
the pool are emblems of the Californian lifestyle; Hockney has made
his own. In view of the other pictures in this series, in many of
which there is also a male figure bathing, Hockney would seem to
have returned to the ancient myth of the Golden Age. The clinically
clean atmosphere should not, however, cause one overlook the fact
that this is merely a reaction "after the Fall." Hockney's
idyllic, sensorly charged leisure world clashes with the profound
social upheavals that took place in the 1960s, from which the artist
tries in vain to shield himself. Hockney's perfectly staged visual
worlds, for which he also used photomontage and collage, fascinated
an entire generation of younger artists who preferred a "freely
figurative" form of painting to an abstract art that had
congealed into ornamentation.
Book: Icon of art : the 20 th century
David Hockney
POOL AND STEPS (Louisiana)
British born Hockney (1937-) was a boy wonder of the British Pop Art
before moving to Southern California. As an artist, he continued to
evolve - moving from a subdued, introspective style to an
"American" style of bright colors and optimistic
landscapes. He became particularly enamored with swimming pools and
their clarity of color and light. POOL AND STEPS was published by
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Humlebaek, Denmark for an
exhibition at the Louisiana museum of modern art. Hockney's original
painting was done in 1971, but I do not have a date for the poster.
Overall paper size is 33 1/2" by 24 1/2".
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Loustal: Je préfère les
peintres instinctifs et figuratifs. Les peintres du début du siècle
Matisse, Modigliani, Gauguin. Tous les peintres allemands de " la
nouvelle subjectivité ", Beckmann, Grosz, Otto Dix. Et bien sûr,
Hopper, Hockney, Balthus, pour l'immobilisme.
(Itinéraire
dans l'univers de la bande dessinée , Michel-Edouard Leclerc page 186)
Loustal Barney et la note blue, 1987
p.25
David Hockney "A bigger
Splah" 1967
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David Hockney by Peter Clothier
Paperback: 128 pages
(Modern Masters Series, Vol. 17)
Publisher: Abbeville Press, Inc.; (April 1995)
ISBN: 0789200368
David Hockney. Paintings. by Paul Melia, Ulrich Luckhardt
200 p. - Prestel, 2000
ISBN: 3791324136
DAVID HOCKNEY art CATALOGUE RAISONNE
Posters
San Francisco; 1994; First Edition Hardcover; NEW with DustJacket;
large folio at 12 x 15 inches.
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