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Lot Essay
For a lifetime, moving water in all forms has fascinated David Hockney as a subject in his painting. Ocean waves, lawn sprinklers, splashing shower water, and the gently lapping or churning surface of a swimming pool have captured his imagination and presented a daunting technical challenge that he relishes.
In 1964, Hockney moved to Los Angeles. In that year, a swimming pool first appeared in the seminal painting, The California Collector, and Hockney continued to paint the subject passionately. In these early water pictures, Hockney was influenced by the abstract, interlocking puzzle piece surfaces of Jean Dubuffet's work. Hockney's early pool water was stylized in a flat, modern manner in which looping spaghetti like lines communicated the notion of moving water.
Over the next several years, portaiture and photography primarily occupied the artist, and he developed an intimate and powerful naturalism in this period. The elaborate rendering of the pool water captures not only the gently moving and elusive surface, but also the intricate play of light on the surface and below, streaming down, bending, and reflecting. In the mystically beautiful depths of the pool, Hockney describes the possiblities of blue. The subject of Study of Water, Phoenix Arizona is the pool at the famous Biltmore Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright whose simple elegant pool architecture provides structure for this watery work.
Study of Water, Phoenix Arizona was featured on the back cover of the catalogue of the important exhibition David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, 1995, which traveled from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, to Hamburger Kunastalle, Hamburg, ending at the Los Angeles County Musuem of Art. In his catalogue essay for this exhibition, Paul Melia quotes David Hockney, "Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form. The color of a river is related to the sky it reflects, and the sea always seems to me to be the same color and have the same dancing patterns. But the look of the swimming pool water is controllable -even its color can be manmade- and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky, but because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well."
In 1964, Hockney moved to Los Angeles. In that year, a swimming pool first appeared in the seminal painting, The California Collector, and Hockney continued to paint the subject passionately. In these early water pictures, Hockney was influenced by the abstract, interlocking puzzle piece surfaces of Jean Dubuffet's work. Hockney's early pool water was stylized in a flat, modern manner in which looping spaghetti like lines communicated the notion of moving water.
Over the next several years, portaiture and photography primarily occupied the artist, and he developed an intimate and powerful naturalism in this period. The elaborate rendering of the pool water captures not only the gently moving and elusive surface, but also the intricate play of light on the surface and below, streaming down, bending, and reflecting. In the mystically beautiful depths of the pool, Hockney describes the possiblities of blue. The subject of Study of Water, Phoenix Arizona is the pool at the famous Biltmore Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright whose simple elegant pool architecture provides structure for this watery work.
Study of Water, Phoenix Arizona was featured on the back cover of the catalogue of the important exhibition David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, 1995, which traveled from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, to Hamburger Kunastalle, Hamburg, ending at the Los Angeles County Musuem of Art. In his catalogue essay for this exhibition, Paul Melia quotes David Hockney, "Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form. The color of a river is related to the sky it reflects, and the sea always seems to me to be the same color and have the same dancing patterns. But the look of the swimming pool water is controllable -even its color can be manmade- and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky, but because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well."