A Bigger Splash

A Bigger Splash, Pop art acrylic painting created in 1967 by British artist David Hockney. This large and striking work is one of several pictures of California swimming pools that Hockney painted. Hockney’s colleague R.B. Kitaj commented, “It is a rare event in modern art when a sense of place is achieved at the level of very fine painting.” Kitaj noted Hockney’s work of the 1960s as an outstanding contemporary example, alongside Edward Hopper’s images of 1940s America.

A Bigger Splash captures the desolation of a southwestern American midday outside a Modernist California home. The sense of stillness is reinforced by the strong horizontals and verticals of the composition. Hockney created the flat, rectilinear shapes by masking the canvas and applying the acrylic paint with rollers. Human presence is almost entirely absent both from the canvas and from the scene itself. The only element interrupting the painting’s discipline is the diving board jutting diagonally into the frame and, of course, the splash. The subject of the painting announces himself with a chaotic explosion of white but remains, nevertheless, submerged in the calm blue surface.

However, the painting’s central themes tend to obscure its often surprising details. The two palm trees in the background, which appear either strangely proportioned or exceedingly far away, are a humorous addition. Hockney added the splash itself on top of the flat blue surface of the pool, painting slowly and carefully with small brushes. Hockney evidently enjoyed himself, saying “I loved the idea of painting this thing that lasts for two seconds; it takes me two weeks to paint this event...” The immediacy of its appeal has made this vibrant and pleasing painting an icon of Pop art as well as of southern California.