David Hockney and the Pop Art Movement: Key Works

Introduction: Hockney and Pop Art

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

David Hockney didn't wash up on shore, but he is one of the most important and most celebrated contributors 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 United States, and New York City and Los Angeles in particular.

A Bigger Splash: Pool, Place, and Composition

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 became the subject of a film by Jack Hazan, also titled 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 that 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 point of the diver's entry (the diver is not visible), and delicate lines resembling small lightning strikes rise up from the deep blue of the pool, providing a sense of outward motion from the enormous splash. Clothier refers to the sky as "infinite" with "immeasurable depth," and 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 the seat of the director's chair at all. The subtle suggestion here — pure conjecture — is that Hockney is letting the viewer know there is no director, and that this swimming pool scene is typical of the ubiquitous, laid-back Southern California atmosphere where faces are unnecessary as long as there is a pool.

Is this "high art" blended poignantly with the Los Angeles 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 and Leung write, also marked the end of "modernist cultural hegemony"; whether or not Hockney would agree with that assessment is beside the point — his work stands alone in its innovative, eclectic style.

Nicholas Pioch writes that "the solitary figure" who 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 itself is a dramatic and considerable focus of the painting.

A Lawn Being Sprinkled: The American Dream in Paint

Another well-known Hockney work, "A Lawn Being Sprinkled," according to Clothier "offers the viewer a place between the timeless and the instantaneous" (Clothier, 1995, p. 34). The Harper Stone publication asserts that "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 spatial recession," as the Harper Stone critique explains.

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 dream-like image — the American dream is splashed across the canvas. Richard Hertz writes that paintings like this reflect "the aspirations of ordinary people," and that such imagery is consistent with 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 that art focused on popular imagery deals with things "everybody thinks about." Which is not to say that everybody thinks about cool sprinklers and thick green lawns; but everybody does dream of owning property, and many dream of that property being in Southern California — a kind of lotus land.

Conclusion: Hockney's Enduring Vision

Hockney himself has asked, "What can't photography do?" The answer is obvious: the camera can't create gorgeous paintings like "Bigger Trees Near Water."