Further Reading'Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool', by David Hockney
Click image to see a larger version (opens in new window) On closer inspection, the picture’s surface reveals the proud edges of certain forms. These are the result of Hockney’s use of masking tape to help him make straight lines. In parts his colour has bled beneath the tape. Some have found this an irritating error in what is an otherwise crisp, sharp image. Others have argued that, like the bare canvas edging, it simply emphasises the human, flawed process of picture-making. Hockney’s paintings of Californian swimming pools have become extremely famous. Just as American artist Edward Hopper gave the world its view of the still and at times, haunting melancholy of North American city streets, so too Hockney has created iconic images of the self-indulgent, poolside life of the American west coast. People who have never visited California think of it as looking like his seductive, sun-soaked pictures. Nikos Stangos, who interviewed Hockney at length in 1975, and talked with him about this painting and related views, described them as: ‘…a catalogue of the Los Angeles art world in which Hockney spent his Californian years that will stand for the period as much as Evelyn Waugh’s Loved One stands for the earlier Los Angeles of Forest Lawn and other excesses …The paintings of these years were the best to date and there is one good one after another…All are detached and crystalline, all breathe a clarity of light, perception and realised intention that mark Hockney’s new and greater ambition to paint the world dead on, as he saw it’. Between 1965 and 1967 Hockney made several large pictures like this one. The best known, entitled ‘The Bigger Splash’, also provided the title for a film made at the time about Hockney and his friends. Made in 1966, this painting won first prize in the 1967 John Moores Liverpool Exhibition and was given to the Walker by Sir John Moores. Characteristically, Hockney used his prize money to pay for his parents to travel on holiday, from the family home in Bradford to visit relatives in Australia. Back to artwork of the month - 'Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool' | Artworks of the Month Homepage Artworks of month Archive |
