David Hockney

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo 207

“If there is one image that more than any other is conventionally associated with David Hockney’s art, surely it is the image of the swimming pool.” - Christopher Knight, “Composite Views: Themes and Motifs In Hockney’s Art,” Exh. Cat., Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (And Travelling), David Hockney: A Retrospective, 1988, p. 23

In late 1963, a 26-year-old David Hockney stepped off a plane and onto the sun-baked Los Angeles tarmac. The trip was Hockney's first to Southern California, and it would prove to be monumental. Born and raised under the cloudy skies of West Yorkshire, England, Hockney was delighted by California’s persistent sunshine, bright colour palette, and serene lifestyle. As the artist noted in a later interview, “California did affect me very strongly…As I flew over San Bernardino and looking down and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I’ve ever been arriving at any other city…” (quoted in: Walker, John Albert, Cultural Offensive: America’s Impact on British Art Since 1945,’ United Kingdom, Pluto Press, 1998).  

Following his West Coast sojourn, glimmering swimming pools, a symbol of the American Dream, frequented Hockney’s work on both canvas and paper. Over a decade later, in 1976, he wrote, “Water in swimming pools changes its look more than any other form. The colour of a river is related to the sky it reflects, and the sea always seems to me to be the same colour and have the same dancing patterns. But the look of swimming-pool water is controllable – even its colour is man-made – and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well.” (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, p. 104). Subsequently, in upstate New York at Kenneth Tyler’s printing atelier, Hockney enjoyed daily dips in the master printer’s private pool. Enamoured by the play of light on the water, he spent endless hours inspecting the glassy surface, the occasional splash and ripple, the way light refracted along its man-made edges. A meditation on light, shadow, and movement, Lithograph of Water Made of Thick and Thin Lines and Two Light Blue Washes captures the carefree spirit of summer.