David Hockney — A Bigger Splash #notesontheartwork

August is almost over but Europe is still hot as hell, so the ideal painting for the return of #notesontheartwork is, of course, A Bigger Splash by the British artist David Hockney, whose iconic depiction of his California dream can transport us to a refreshing moment on a hot day. And that’s everything someone can ask for while sitting on a chair writing an article on a warm apartment. This 1967 painting became a milestone not only within the artist’s career and the Pop art movement but also within art history itself and it’s constantly mentioned as a masterpiece by art historians and curators while figuring in thousands of books and articles. But what makes this picture a masterpiece? In a video interview available on Tate’s website, Hockney answers the question of what makes a picture memorable “Nobody knows, really […] there’s no formula, if there was a formula, there’d be a lot more memorable pictures”. So, let’s dive into A Bigger Splash and try to understand what makes it so special. This is a very simple, stylized and minimalistic painting that depicts a view of a Californian swimming pool on which someone appears to have jumped in the second before the painting was made. A yellow diving board breaks out of the right corner of the foreground to give perspective as well as to cut across the predominant horizontals, but mostly to introduce us to the main character in this short story, the splash, painted mixing areas of lighter blue with fine white lines on the monotone turquoise water. <a href="https://medium.com/@theredstudio.blog_25703/david-hockney-a-bigger-splash-notesontheartwork-e0e381283f5c">Visit Now</a>