Celebrated as one of the most prominent figures in the pop art movement, #DavidHockney has commanded worldwide attention with his techniques of perception, particularly his prolific portrayal of swimming pools. Breaking a record in 2018, one of his pool paintings, the ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ was sold at Christie’s for $90 million. Fascinated by the changing appearance of pool water during a visit to California, his interest in pools transformed into somewhat of an obsession.

In 1963, Hockney first landed in LA and was instantly drawn to the calm Californian aesthetic. Recounting his flight to LA “I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over.” A stark difference from his upbringing in Yorkshire, England, where private swimming pools are a symbol of wealth and luxury, for Hockney the LA swimming pools had a powerful appeal and they become one of his most treasured subject matters.

Throughout the 60s, visual experiences of his surroundings became a recurring theme in his art. Enthralled by his environment, Hockney grew attached to the modernistic architecture, the free-spirited space that allowed for his sexual expression as a gay artist and the myriad of pools he found in LA. The first to extensively use acrylic paint, this new medium allowed for vibrant colours that reflected the saturated palette of California and flat perspectives which uniquely depicted the movement of water. In vividly detailing his experience of LA, he had created a visual identity for the city.

Yet, he found an even larger way to leave his mark. In 1988, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel commissioned him to create a mural at the bottom of the hotel’s Tropicana Pool. A marvel that was recently restored, the buoyant blue strokes that decorated the bottom of the pool animated the water in signature Hockney style. “It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything-it can be any colour, it’s moveable, it has no set visual description.”