Liberal Arts Blog — David Hockney: “A Bigger Splash,” “Portrait of An Artist (pool with two figures),” “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy”Liberal Arts Blog — Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Design, Film, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic: David Hockney (1937 — ): “A Bigger Splash,” “Portrait of An Artist (pool with two figures),” “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy”
Born in chilly Yorkshire in the north of England, David Hockney moved to sunny Los Angeles in 1964 and fell in love with it. He is perhaps most famous for his swimming pool pictures. Today, a few notes on two of these plus a third painting — a double portrait of two friends with their white cat. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
A BIGGER SPLASH (1967) — a large roughly square painting (8 ft by 8 ft)
1. “Who jumped into the pool? I don’t actually know, it was done from a photograph of a splash. That I haven’t taken, but that’s what it’s commenting on.”
2. “The stillness of an image (….) Most of the painting was spent on the splash and the splash lasts two seconds and the building is permanent there. That’s what it’s about actually. You have to look at the details.”
3. The magnetic attraction of Los Angeles: “I instinctively knew I was going to like it and as I flew over San Bernardino and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I have ever been in arriving in any city.”
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST (Pool with two figures) 1967–7 feet by 10 feet
1. “This work brings together two of Hockney’s themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait.”
2. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background.
3. The standing fully clothed figure is Peter Schlesinger, Hockney’s “former lover and muse.”
NB: In 2018, the painting sold for $90 million, at the time the highest price ever paid for one by a living artist.
MR. AND MRS. CLARK AND PERCY (1971)
1. “Depicts the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell in their flat in Notting Hill Gate after their wedding with one of the couple’s cats on Clark’s knee.”
2. “The white cat depicted in the painting was Blanche, Percy was another of their cats but Hockney thought “Percy” made a better title.”
3. ‘Hockney drew on both the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck and A Rake’s Progress by William Hogarth in the symbolism and composition of the painting.”
NB: “The positions of the two figures are reversed from the Arnolfini Portrait with the implication that Birtwell is the assertive partner. Hockney’s portrait with the bride standing and the groom sitting, also reverses the convention of traditional wedding portraiture.”
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Getting_Out_of_Nick%27s_Pool
Top 10 Depictions of Pools in Art — Artsper Magazine
David Hockney’s iconic pool painting set to sell for a record amount
The 10 Most Famous Artworks of David Hockney — niood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Kenton_Nelson
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
