A bigger splash

A Bigger Splash, by David Hockney, 1967 April, in California. 

Tate Britain, London

• It depicts a swimming pool beside a modern house, disturbed by a large splash of water created by an unseen figure who has apparently just jumped in from a diving board.

• Apart from the Splash, the painting was finished very evenly, and flat with a paint roller, in two or three layers with the few details- tree, glass, chair ,reflections-overpainted.
• A wide border and central narrow stripe at the pool’s edge are left unpainted. The boerder creates an effect like a Polaroid photograph.
• David Hockney created this painting from a photograph. The building in the painting is a modernist building typical of the United States.The painting has been viewed as a critical link in Hockney’s ruminations on time between his earlier Picture Emphasising Stillness and his later “joiners” portraits, created by collaging many photographs of the same subject taken over a period of hours.

The colour and uniqueness of the scene sparked my interest and a series of research into the background of the painter and the context in which it was created.

I think it is because it is part of the mainstream of pop art that David hockney’s painting has a poster-like brightness of colour and flat composition.
But what is clear is that modernist architecture was already very popular and mainstream at the time.

Also as a modern building in steel, glass and concrete, it reminds me of the Barcelona pavilion designed by Mies Van Der Rohe.