Pop Art David Hockney I

Pop Art

David Hockney

I am for art that comes in a can or washes up on shore..."

David Hockney didn't wash up on shore, but he is one of the most important and most celebrated contributor's to the Pop Art movement, having launched his very public and very successful career in the 1960s. Today he remains an icon in the world of pop art from his birthplace in England to places far and wide throughout the world - not the least of which is the U.S., New York City and Los Angeles, in particular.

Among his many impressive and well-noted works is "A Bigger Splash" - a swimming pool painting inspired by his years as a resident of Los Angeles. This painting actually ended up the subject of a film by Jack Hazan, a Bigger Splash. The painting is featured on the cover of Peter Clothier's book, Hockney; Clothier writes that the diagonal diving board in the right foreground "offers an obvious point of entry" and the viewer is "caught between artifice and illusion - the pale, smooth, rolled-on blue of a monochrome band of paint."

The eye is immediately drawn to the splash at the entry of the diver (who is not visible) and delicate lines resembling small lightning strikes rise up from the deep blue of the pool, providing a kind of outer motion to the huge splash. Clothier refers to the sky as "infinite" with "immeasurable depth" he alludes to the chair positioned in front of the glass windows of the residence as a "perversely dimensional director's chair." The word "perversely" is likely a result of the narrow shadow that doesn't match up with the seat of the director's chair at all. The subtle hint here - pure conjecture - is that Hockney is letting the viewer know that there is no director, and that this swimming pool scene is typical of the ubiquitous Southern California laid back scene where faces are not necessary as long as there is a pool. Is this "high art" blended poignantly with the L.A. mass culture scene? "The acceptability of introducing content from mass culture into high art has been an art-world given at least since Pop Art..." according to Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (p. 376). The period that launched Pop Art, Kocur & Leung write, also marked the end of "modernist cultural hegemony"; whether or not Hockney would agree with that is not important; his work stands alone in its innovative, eclectic style.

Nicholas Pioch writes that "the solitary figure" that has just dived into the pool in "A Bigger Splash" has been "deliberately overwhelmed by the strength and composure of the rest of the composition." One could easily challenge that assessment, since the splash is a dramatic and considerable focus of the painting.

Another well-known Hockney work is called "A Lawn Being Sprinkled," that according to Clothier "offers the viewer a place between the timeless and the instantaneous" (Clothier, 1995, p. 34). The Harper Stone publication asserts, "depth and flatness come together in nearly all areas of the painting" Moreover, the size of the sprinklers and the blades of grass "...decreases as they move up the image, giving the suggestion of a special recession," the Harper Stone critique explains.

Certainly albeit this is a beautiful and idealized lawn scene, typical of Southern California's obsession with green lawns, swimming pools and blue skies, but it is also a kind of dream-like image, because the American dream is splashed all over this image. Richard Hertz writes that paintings like this reflect "the aspirations of ordinary people" and that is consistent with the demands for "rapid change on the part of the population at large, in the interest of what is ludicrously referred to as economic growth or well-being." What Hertz seems to be saying is art with popular imagery as a focus deals with things "everybody thinks about." Which is not to say "everybody" thinks about cool sprinklers and thick green lawns; but everybody does dream of owning property and many also dream of that property being in lotus land - Southern California.