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A Bigger Splash’ The photographic source and artistic affinities of David Hockney’s ‘A bigger splash’ by MARTIN HAMMER DAVIDOCKNEY’S H A bigger splash (Fig.32), painted fifty years down from the more visible of the two trees, coincides roughly ago this year, features naturally in the artist’s current eightieth with the far-right corner of the diving-board. birthday retrospective, reviewed on pp.413–15.1 A canonical Aesthetic detachment reflected the circumstances of the pic- work in art history, the picture owes its wide appeal to many ture’s creation. A bigger splash was completed in Berkeley, where factors: legibility and economy; the visual wit inherent in im- Hockney was teaching from April to June 1967, and not in Los plying human action although no figure is visible; its evocation Angeles. In fact, the painting was the elaboration of an idea of an idyllic sunny environment, the dream of Arcadia trans- explored in two pictures produced the previous year, The little planted from the Roman Campagna to modern California; splash and The splash (both in private collections).4 n I that sense, Hockney’s precise, well-crafted execution; reproducibility; and A bigger splash comprised a distillation of Los Angeles, realised a lingering association with the Swinging Sixties and its good with the benefit of geographical and emotional distance. The vibrations. Yet the recent recycling of Hockney’s title for that of two previous versions had been sold in Hockney’s one-man a rather dark film about a Mediterranean holiday that goes bad- show at the Landau-Alan Gallery in New York in April 1967, ly wrong, suggests not merely the continuing resonance of the organised in conjunction with his London dealer, John Kas- work, but also its availability to less upbeat interpretations.2 nI min.5 The impulse to make the larger version that spring may reinserting A bigger splash into its specific historical and cultur- therefore have had a commercial dimension, looking ahead to al moment, and by employing close reading and comparative his next show. A bigger splash was exhibited early the following analysis (including with its photographic source, here identi- year at Kasmin’s, and was quickly sold.6 fied), the aim of this article is to bring out some of the complex- If audiences and collectors remote from Los Angeles relished ities and ambiguities of the painting. the exotic theme, they also doubtless appreciated Hockney’s The work draws one in, spatially and imaginatively. Judg- modern idiom. The intensity of colour, underlying clarity and ing from the grisaille reflections in the window, the urban set- geometry, and the use of flat, unmodulated paint, acrylic rather ting wraps around the pool, into which an individual has just than oil, applied with a roller, and with masking-tape establish- plunged, the human presence reduced to the merest suggestion ing sharp edges, would all have brought to mind the large ab- of fleshy pink at the base of the splash. The diving-board pro- stract paintings of Kenneth Noland or his British counterpart, jects from the viewer’s side of the pool. Metaphorically speaking Robyn Denny.7 Such artists were being exhibited to critical we, too, are encouraged to take the plunge, to seek out layers acclaim at Kasmin’s, which largely operated as a London out- of meaning and association beneath the serene, flat façade. Yet post of post-painterly Abstraction.8 Hockney recalled building that immersion coexists with an inbuilt distance. The diver has up A bigger splash initially as an arrangement of blocks of flat absented him- or herself, leaving us high and dry. The omission colour, which were then rendered representational through the of the section of the pool surround in the foreground serves to insertion of pockets of detail. Similarly, he noted that the close- disembody the viewer. Although the picture contains natural- ly related painting A lawn sprinkler (1967; Fig.33) ‘looked at one istic detail, it comes across as artfully contrived and simplified. point exactly like a symmetrical Robin [sic] Denny painting’.9 An image of implied momentary, perhaps spontaneous, action In A bigger splash, Hockney’s palette and diving-board could is suspended within a painting that appears highly controlled in be seen to allude to works by Denny such as Ted Bentley (1961; the manner of its execution, ‘a balanced composition’ in Hock- private collection) and Little man (1964–65; private collection).10 ney’s words.3 e W might register, for instance, that the white In the latter, the central vertical strip, animated surround and patch at the heart of the splash is positioned on the painting’s white border may even have triggered associations with pool central vertical axis. The unbroken transverse band at the far imagery for Hockney. side of the pool occupies the horizontal centre of the painting, A bigger splash must have seemed poised, knowingly and ap- while the area above is bisected by zones describing the build- pealingly, between abstraction and figuration. It is also ambiva- ing and the flat blue sky. The perspective of the diving-board lent in tone. Although most perceive a celebratory intention, recedes in the direction of the small chair, and its ochre colour spectators might also identify an ironic aspect to Hockney’s de- is picked up in the building’s flat roof. A vertical, continuing pictions of the Californian good life. At the affirmative end of 1 C. Stephens and A. Wilson, eds.: exh cat. David Hockney, London (Tate 5 Exh. cat. David Hockney: New Paintings and Drawings, New York (Landau-Alan Britain), Paris (Centre Pompidou) and New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Gallery) 1967. 2017–18. 6 Exh. cat. David Hockney: a splash, a lawn, two rooms, two stains, some neat cushions 2 A Bigger Splash, directed by Luca Guadagnino. 2015. and a table . painted, London (Kasmin Ltd) January–February 1968. The paint- 3 N. Stangos: David Hockney by David Hockney, London and New York 1975, p.125. ing was purchased from Kasmin Ltd in 1981 by Sheridan, Marquess of Dufferin 4 Ibid., pp.124 and 161. and Ava. 386 m a y 2017 • c l i x • t h e b u r l i n g t o n m a g a z i n e LAY_HAMMER_DavidHockney.indd 386 13/04/2017 16:01 DAVID HOCKNEY’S ‘A BIGGER SPLASH’ 32. A bigger splash, by David Hockney. 1967. Canvas, 242.5 by 243.9 cm. (Tate, London; © David Hockney). the scale, outdoor pools were bound up with an erotic frisson the focus of family life, a latter-day ‘hearth’ for one commenta- in both hetero- and homosexual milieux. The motif offered an tor in 1967, Hockney’s variants on it could be seen to extend his obvious pretext for the display of nearly naked male bodies, as ‘assimilationist’ and domesticated vision of homosexual iden- adapted elsewhere by Hockney from magazines such as Phy- tity.12 One critic discerned oblique self-portraiture in this image sique Pictorial.11 Given the status of the pool in Los Angeles as of ‘undiluted pleasure and satisfaction’: 7 The Tate acquired Noland’s Gift (1961–62) in 1966, see http://www.tate.org. 10 Reproduced in D.A. Mellor: The Art of Robyn Denny, London 2002, pp.74 and 114. uk/art/artworks/noland-gift-t00898/text-catalogue-entry, accessed 17th January 11 On the gay dimension, see T. Stallings: ‘From Beefcake to Skatecake: Shifting 2017. Depictions of Masculinity and the Backyard Swimming Pool in Southern Cali- 8 See L. Tickner: ‘The Kasmin Gallery, 1963–1972’, Oxford Art Journal 30, 2 fornia’, in D. Cornell, ed.: Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California (2007), p.263. Photography 1945–1982, Munich, London and New York 2012, pp.128–71. 9 Stangos, op. cit. (note 3), p.126. 12 C. Whiting: Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s, Berkeley 2006, p.124. t h e b u r l i n g t o n m a g a z i n e • c l i x • m a y 2017 387 LAY_HAMMER_DavidHockney.indd 387 13/04/2017 16:02 DAVID HOCKNEY’S ‘A BIGGER SPLASH’ 33. A lawn sprinkler, by David Hockney. 1967. Canvas, 122 by 122 cm. (Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; © David Hockney). The subject of A Bigger Splash is both a disappearance and an was currently emerging in New York.15 The association with immersion – the vanishing of the diver, his entry into the Hockney’s image may seem far-fetched, although we should pool – which was surely Hockney’s way of dramatising his note that Duchamp was by then a focus of attention in Califor- own feelings on having arrived in America. He too had made nia, following his 1963 retrospective in Pasadena.16 In A bigger his getaway, had plunged into a new and delightful place. The splash one might also discern an ironic reference to Abstract artist does not actually show us his alter ego, the diver, revel- Expressionism. Hockney certainly knew the recent, more ling in the sudden silence of underwater. But he makes much pastoral work of Willem de Kooning, as in Merritt Parkway of the splash that hides him from us [. .] a flurry of excited (Fig.34), with its dramatic explosion of white floated against white paint into which the painter seems to have distilled all deep flat blue and audaciously applied with house-painters’ the happiness and energy of being young, and in love, and brushes. Hockney surely conceived his own fastidious and more exactly where you want to be; an ejaculation of joy.13 illustrative variation on the splash theme as a knowing refer- ence to such precursors, especially given that De Kooning’s By extension, the picture might be located within a minor art- 1959 sell-out show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York was istic tributary, rooted in Dada, whereby the splash motif is reviewed in Time magazine under the title ‘Big Splash’.
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