In Egyptian tomb painting, stylised figures – generally shown with heads and legs in profile and the torso facing frontally – are arranged across a flat surface.
Understanding David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash
David Hockney is one of the most popular and widely recognised artists of our time. For over sixty years he has enchanted audiences with his bold, colourful, and innovative art.
In the 1950s and 1960s when Hockney was just starting out, lots of artists were experimenting with abstraction. For example abstract expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock were making paintings using only colour and gestural marks. Although Hockney explored abstraction at art college – simplifying and abstracting people and using expressive marks – he has always been interested in representing the places and people around him.
To me painting is picture making. I am not that interested in painting that doesn’t depict the visible world. I mean, it might be perfectly good art it just doesn’t interest me that much.
David Hockney, Audio Arts 1978
Focusing on David Hockney’s iconic painting A Bigger Splash we look at the ideas, themes, and inspirations that make Hockney such a great picture-maker.
A closer look at ‘A Bigger Splash’
Painted in 1967, A Bigger Splash is perhaps David Hockney’s best-known artwork. What is it that makes this painting so iconic and seductive – and still very modern-looking fifty years after it was made?
The painting depicts a sun-drenched swimming pool in Los Angeles. Behind the pool is a pink modernist building and an empty chair. The silhouettes of neighbouring buildings are reflected in the building’s large window. Two spindly palm trees and a neat border of grass suggest carefully manicured gardens. Unusually for Hockney’s paintings from this time, there is no-one in sight and the scene is almost entirely still … apart from the splash.
We are left wondering who dived in. The fact that the diver is not shown, adds to the sense that it could be anyone – even us sitting in that empty chair by the pool and jumping into to the cool still water!
What do you think of when you look at A Bigger Splash? Is there a word that sums up how the painting makes you feel? It’s OK if that word is ‘jealous’ as A Bigger Splash is an immediately seductive image. It makes us think of holidays and escapism – or perhaps the sort of life most of us can only dream about.
A ‘promised land’
Hockney first visited California in 1963 and was immediately won over by its sunshine and laid-back lifestyle (quite different from London where he had been living). He described it as his ‘promised land’ and spent much of the next forty years living there.
But Hockney instead used small brushes to painstakingly reproduce the splash from the photograph: the shapes made by the upsurging cascade of water, the different areas of transparency and the details and traces of the tiny drips. It took him two weeks to get the splash looking just right.
You will need:
- a sheet of watercolour or thick-ish paper
- a small roundhead brush
- black watercolour or acrylic paint or ink
- a camera or computer to create your source image
Hockney took two weeks to paint the splash in A Bigger Splash. He worked from a photograph of a splash and used small brushes to copy its shapes, shades and details. (He probably experimented with brush strokes and marks to work out the best way of representing the different bits of the splash).
Step 1: Take a photograph (or find a photograph) of a split-second moment of movement. It doesn’t have to be a splash. It could be a darting fly, someone dancing or car headlights whizzing by at night.
Step2: Use filter settings on your camera or computer to render the picture in black and white. (This will make it easier to focus on the details and not be distracted by colour.)
Step 3: Look closely at the details of the photograph. Using a small brush see if you can work out ways of using marks, lines and washes to mimic the blurs and other details of movement.
Add water to your paint or ink and use the whole brush head to create washes. Use the paint or ink neat and the tip of your brush for sharper lines, dots and other details). Don’t worry if it takes a bit of time to get this right – remember Hockney took two weeks!
Top tip: David Hockney often uses the technique of squaring up an image to copy it or enlarge it. This might help to focus on different areas of detail. Draw a grid over your source photograph and a similar grid on your paper. Look at one square at a time and copy the details you see in each square into the corresponding square on your paper.
Materials and Techniques
At approximately 2.5 metres (8 feet) squared, A Bigger Splash is almost life size. By standing in front of it we almost become part of the picture.
What materials did hockney use?
David Hockney used acrylic paint on white cotton duck canvas to paint A Bigger Splash.
Acrylic was a relatively new type of paint first available commercially for artists in America in in the early 1950s. (It didn’t arrive in Europe until a decade later). It is water-soluble and can be used thickly for an opaque surface, or by adding water or other mediums can be used to create thin washes. The beauty of acrylic paint over oil paint is that it dries much more quickly so artists don’t have to wait for ages for sections of painting to dry before working back into them.
Hockney was one of the first artists to make extensive use of acrylic. Being fast drying it suited his technique of painting large areas of flat colour and then adding details. He also felt that the fast-drying acrylic paint was more suited to portraying the sun-lit, clean-contoured suburban landscapes of California than slow drying oil paint.
How did he paint it?
Usually, when painting on canvas, artists stretch the canvas over a wooden frame (called a stretcher) attaching it with tacks or staples. But to paint A Bigger Splash Hockney stapled the canvas to a wall.
He didn’t draw out the image on the canvas first but painted the blocks of colour directly onto it. To achieve the flat even surface of the sky, the building and the pool Hockney used a paint roller, applying two or three layers of paint so that it was opaque. He then painted the few details, the trees, grass, chair, reflections on the window – and the all important splash – on top of the colour blocks using a small brush.
Hockney left a wide border around the image unpainted. (The yellow colour you see around the edge of A Bigger Splash is the raw canvas.) This raw canvas border developed from his earlier style of keeping large areas of the canvas raw. It also suggests the border of a polaroid photograph, perhaps hinting at his use as photographs as a source for the painting. He also left a narrow line of raw canvas on the top edge of the pool which we can see in the detail below.
Faces to remember: Innu artist opens new exhibition with paintings of her culture and family
A new exhibition by Innu artist Mary Ann Penashue depicts real people from her life and her culture, with the goal of preserving her memories of her upbringing by her grandparents in Labrador.
Arlette Lazarenko · CBC News · Posted: Nov 08, 2023 4:30 AM EST | Last Updated: November 8
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In the paintings of Mary Ann Penashue, there are many faces.
Faces full of lines from aging and expressions, people holding pipes in their mouths. Other faces are younger, people embracing someone they love, and in other pictures are the caribou, which the Innu artist from Sheshatshiu, Labrador, says is sacred to her and her culture.
Penashue’s new art collection, called Ninan Nitassinan — Innu-aimun for “Our Land” — is being exhibited at the Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s until the end of November, and the artist says the pictures she used are from her personal photographs.
“It is to preserve my culture and also my family,” said Penashue.
Audio
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The paintings, made with acrylic, she says, depict real people from her life. One of them is of an elderly woman holding a small child. That’s Penashue’s mother and her granddaughter in an embrace.
“At that time, my mom was not well, and whenever I brought the children to her, she was always pleasant and felt happy. I would take my granddaughter with me whenever I could.”
WATCH | Mary Anne Penashue describes her latest work:
Painting the positive: Innu artist Mary Anne Penashue launches exhibit
1 day ago
Duration 3:24
Featured Video In her evocative canvases, artist Mary Anne Penashue tells a positive story of Innu life in Labrador. A show of Penashue’s work is on display this month at the Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s. That’s where the CBC’s Anthony Germain caught up with her.
Two other people who inspired Penashue’s art, she says, are her grandparents. They were artistic in their own ways, Penashue says, and she remembers helping her grandparents build canoes im her childhood.
They died before they could see the artist she turned out to be, she says.
“When I started painting people, they were the two individuals that I began painting after faces because I wanted to show my respect. I miss them.”
Not only does Penashue paint to remember her family and the people she loves, but she says she also touches on cultural significance in her artwork. For example, she often portrays the caribou.
On one canvas, with layers of white and grey depicting snow, there are tracks of a wandering caribou, its spirit following another set of footprints — those of a hunter.
“Caribou is a special spiritual animal, so we respect the caribou and the spirit that controls it,” Penashue said.
In her culture, she says, hunters carry certain items, like beads, to attract the spirit of a caribou.
And that is depicted in the painting, with a pipe and beads among the tracks, as if the hunter dropped them in the snow. This painting also comes from a memory, she says. One of her grandfathers carried beads and a pipe with him in hopes of a successful hunt.
Penashua says her paintings are her way to keep those memories of her family and her culture alive, to show them to her grandchildren and to “keep the tradition alive.”
“It’s very important to me and for my kids as well.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arlette Lazarenko is a journalist working in St. John’s. She is a graduate of the College of the North Atlantic journalism program. Story tips welcomed by email: [email protected]
With files from Heidi Atter and On The Go
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Teachers’ Notes: ‘Henry Taylor’
This resource has been produced to accompany the exhibition, ‘Henry Taylor’ at Hauser & Wirth Somerset from 25 February – 6 June 2021.
About Henry Taylor Born in 1958 in Ventura, California, the youngest of eight children, Taylor’s initial exposure to the medium of painting came from his father, who was a commercial painter employed by the U.S. Government at a naval air station. When he was at school, Taylor had an avid interest in the art historical movements spanning the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Taylor later attended Oxnard College, where he studied Journalism, Anthropology, and Set Design, and Taylor’s formal training came in the 1990s when he studied at The California Institute of the Arts; at the same time as studying he also worked as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Taylor currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and internationally, and his work is in prominent public collections including the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg PA, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX, Museum of Modern Art, New York NY, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham NC, P.rez Art Museum, Miami FL, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. In 2018, Taylor was the recipient of The Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize for his outstanding achievements in painting. Taylor’s work was presented at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY in 2017 and 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy in 2019. What does the exhibition look like? For his inaugural exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, the American artist has taken over all five galleries in Somerset to present a major body of sculptural work and paintings. It includes a series of jewel-like miniature sculptural paintings created since the 1990s, formed from found domestic objects such as cigarette boxes as an ongoing visual biography. In preparation for the exhibition Taylor travelled to Somerset for an artist residency, energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of objects and collected materials together to creating a record of his everyday experiences and the materials that define them.
How does he make his work? Henry Taylor works in two and three dimensions, across painting and sculpture. His subjects combine figurative, landscape and history painting. Taylor’s choice of painterly subject – from memory and archival materials, to the live sitter – is firmly dependent upon his sense of connection driven by empathy. Using acrylic paints, Taylor works by painting rapidly and loosely. With this process, he captures his subject’s nuances and mood with gestures and passages of flat, saturated colour offset by areas of rich and intricate detail. The intensity with which he paints is reflected by his brushwork: a network of kinetic strokes that seek to capture a feeling before it flees. Taylor’s subjects, which range from members of his community to symbolic objects representative of historical struggle, span the breadth of the human condition; each work is a holistic visual biography and permanent record of a person or people’s history. Taylor’s practice extends beyond the boundaries of canvas including his series of miniature box paintings and assemblage sculptures. His series of miniature box paintings has evolved over the past three decades, serving as a continuous thread in his studio practice. The earliest, made in the 1990s while Taylor was still a student, are painted on cigarette, cracker, and cereal boxes, surfaces that were on hand and immediate to the artist. What are the main themes in Henry Taylor’s work? Henry Taylor often paints people, but he prefers not to be labelled as a portraitist. Whilst his works may depict individuals, his main theme is culture: history, society, community and narratives. He makes use of art history by deploying archival or pop-cultural references, and art historical predecessors from Louise Nevelson to Bob Thompson.
Where does Taylor get his inspiration? Taylor is voracious and eclectic in his sourcing of subjects. This ‘hunting and gathering,’ as he defines it in his own words, is above all, an active process – one in which Taylor often mines his own history and experiences. In his studio, newspaper clippings and historical photographs of civil rights figures sit alongside his own snapshots of people both strange and familiar to him. This library of images, in turn, is surrounded by a collection of disparate objects that Taylor retrieves from estate sales, his travels abroad, and local flea markets. Scattered across the studio spaces are infinite piles of historical tomes and artist’s monographs. All of these objects and visual documents eventually feature both in his paintings and as building blocks for totemic sculpture. What other artists does it relate to? Henry Taylor’s work has been aligned within various American traditions, including the portraiture tradition of Alice Neel, to the work of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. His innovative, fluid and eclectic approach draws from a wide range of artists such as Basquiat, Degas, Rauschenberg, Matisse, Goya, Whistler, Cubism, Constructivism, and Congolese sculpture.
Glossary Assemblage Assemblage describes art work made by grouping together found or unrelated items. Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988) was an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene. Congolese Sculpture Congo’s many ethnic groups and regions have developed a range of traditional arts, including painting, sculpture, music, and dance, often classified according to the styles of the areas from which they originate. Constructivism Constructivism was a particularly austere branch of abstract art founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko in Russia around 1915. Degas Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Goya Francisco Jos. de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era. Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He was also one of the great portraitists of his time. Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual revival of African American art and literature centered in Harlem, New York City, spanning the 1920s. Identity Politics Identity politics describes a political approach in relation to people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor. They may develop political agendas based on systems of oppression that affect their lives and come from their various identities. Matisse Henri .mile Beno.t Matisse (1869 – 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Multidisciplinary Combining or involving several academic disciplines or professional specializations in an approach to a topic or problem. Alice Neel Alice Neel (1900 – 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Louise Nevelson Louise Nevelson (1899 –1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Rauschenberg Milton Ernest “Robert” Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artworks which incorporated everyday objects as art materials and which blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking and performance. Bob Thompson Bob Thompson (1937 – 1966) worked as an artist in New York from the 1950s, he developed a vital new figurative style in reaction to the dominance of abstract art, yet adapted its spontaneity, scale, and expressive use of color. Tome Tomes are large, usually historical books. Whistler James McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) was an American-born artist known for stylistically advanced full-length portraits and paintings of nocturnal London. Practical activity prompts and ideas for discussion: Figure in Space Focus on someone in your immediate family to create an energetic painting. Consider an exciting interior space to make an atmosphere for your subject to be carrying out everyday actions. Your painting should be quick and intuitive, to allow for an emotive response – be confident and see what you can create! Painting on a box Using an empty cardboard container such as a cereal or toothpaste box, make a 3D painting. Begin by making a list or drawing of anything you’d like to have more of in your life (colour, quiet time, pets, friends etc.) Then make a list of the feelings that these things would create for you (brightness, calm, energetic etc.). Use these feelings to inspire your choice of colour and the style of the way you paint the items onto your box. Self -Portrait Assemblage
- Write down words or draw pictures that describe you right now, your characteristics (funny, colourful, pensive), functions (artist, engineer, homemaker, etc.), tasks and activities (cooking, running, sketching, sleeping), and so on.
- Look at your list/drawing and start collecting things from around your home that represent who you are, what you do, and/or what you’d like to strive for. For “artist” you might grab a paint brush or crayon; “inventor” might make you reach for a tool.
- If you’re looking for more energy in your life, you might search for some orange fabric. If you want to write more, pick up a pen or text from a book. Quiet or alone time could be represented by a shell or something soft and warm.
- Don’t spend a lot of time choosing any one thing: let your instincts guide you.
- Once you have your items, how can you arrange them into a sculpture (assemblage)?
