A Bigger Splash –David Hockney, 1967
(Hockney, 1967)
I came across this striking painting whilst visiting the Tate in London on a school trip. What captured my attention was the Californian impression captured by the bold monotonous colours of turquoise and pink, with the predominant horizontal building directly in contrast with a splash of white in the centre.
A Bigger Splash is the largest of a collection of three paintings by Hockney depicting splashes, the other two being A Splash and A Little Splash. Hockney, born in England, visited Los Angeles in 1964 and subsequently fell in love with the hot climate and sensual, relaxed lifestyle. He painted a series of works all depicting swimming pools between 1964-71, and experimented with different techniques to explore the changing form of water surfaces, with influences including Bernard Cohen and Jean Dubruffet.
Hockney had recently discovered the benefits of fast-drying acrylic paint- Liquitex, a relatively new medium compared to the traditional oil paint, which he deemed more visually appropriate for the hot, parched climate of California.
With regards to the composition of the painting, what immediately stands out is the predominantly horizontal perspective. The view of the swimming pool rests on the background of a low-lying 60s modernist house. A sense of balance is achieved through the equal division of sky, building and patio on the upper half against the pool on the lower half. The startling oblique diving board juts out from the foreground adds to the sense of perspective. It is interesting to note the subtle details used to emphasize the splash- the slightly thicker white line on the building’s flat roof is marked at the same vertical line as the splash, and the splash itself being in line with the diagonal diving board.
The colours of the painting resonate with the contrast of the diving board- the yellow at odds with the turquoise water and sky. The monotonous blocks of colour were actually rollered onto the canvas before Hockney uses a smaller brush to add in the detail of the chair, reflections, trees and grass. Overall the painting is created through a constrained palette, mixing or applied as tints colours such as ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, Naples yellow, Hooker’s green, titanium white, and raw and burnt sienna. Also typical of Hockney’s style at the time was leaving raw canvas on the border. In this case it extends to within the painting itself- under careful observation, one would notice that a thin line of the pool’s edge is actually left unpainted.
A Bigger Splash was based on a photograph Hockey found in a book about building swimming pools. The raw canvas on the outside, leaving a near perfect square, is perhaps indicative of a Polaroid effect. Hockney acknowledges how seeing a splash on painting is even more striking than on photo- it cannot be frozen in time. He later went on to create portraits through collages of the same subject on different photographs taken over a period of time.
‘When you photograph a splash, you’re freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way.’ [1] Hockney took two weeks to complete the painting, with the majority of the time spent painting the central splash with a variety of very small brushes, and he noted the irony of taking a considerable amount of time to capture a fleeting moment.
[1] Catherine Kinley, David Hockney: Seven Paintings, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1992, reproduced [p.5] in colour
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