A Bigger Splash is one of the most well-known works by David Hockney (Bradford, United Kingdom, 1937). It is also one of my favorite paintings by this Pop Art icon. Hockney painted A Bigger Splash in 1967, just after settling in Los Angeles. It is part of a series of paintings that feature the swimming pool as the main element: The Splash, A Little Splash... The good weather that almost always prevails in California – especially compared to his cold and rainy native England – was one of the main reasons that led him to cross the Atlantic. The other was the fact that in the sixties, the West Coast of the United States already had a much more liberal atmosphere (let's remember that homosexuality was still illegal in his home country).
A Bigger Splash is also the name of a semi-fiction documentary about Hockney, directed by Jack Hazan, in which the artist plays himself. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen at the Phenomena, as part of the Dart Festival in Barcelona, a highly recommended event that merges art and documentary cinema. One of the attractions of Hazan's film is that it accompanies Hockney through some of the settings of his paintings. Among them, of course, the famous swimming pools of sophisticated and elegant LA mansions where life unfolds playfully, indolently, and sensually.
The swimming pool has a powerful symbolic charge. In the midst of the summer heatwave, it is like an oasis around which life flourishes. It is also an undeniable status symbol: whoever has a private pool is as if they had a piece of the sea packaged for their exclusive use. And, of course, the pool is a space conducive to hedonism, perhaps that is why they have acquired whimsical shapes, moving away from the classic rectangular model, designed for swimming.
The swimming pool has a powerful symbolic charge. In the midst of the summer heatwave, it is like an oasis around which life flourishes. It is also an undeniable status symbol: whoever has a private pool is as if they had a piece of the sea packaged for their exclusive use.Let's go back to Hockney. A Bigger Splash, seen closely, is a somewhat unsettling painting. Enigmatic. No human figure appears in it, but you imagine that it was there just a moment before the artist painted it, as a large splash of water suggests that someone has just jumped into the pool from the diving board. The protagonist of the painting, however, is not this swimmer whom Hockney, as I said, doesn't even paint, but ourselves becauseA Bigger Splash is, or at least I like to think so, a wonderful invitation to jump into the pool. That is, to live life to the fullest.