David Hockney

(1968)

Before the famous double portraits and before some of the best-known pool paintings, Hockney occasionally turned his attention to the California coastline itself. In California Seascape the subject is deceptively simple: sea, sky and a distant horizon. Yet the painting captures something that fascinated him from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles—the extraordinary light, the sense of openness and the feeling that space stretches on forever. Sometimes a painting doesn't need much more than that.

California Seascape
1968
Acrylic on canvas
213 x 305 cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(1964)
 

California Art Collector was the second painting by Hockney from his first, momentous visit to Los Angeles and is the first painting to convey the dramatic impact his new surroundings would have on his career. Hockney's choice of subject is only the most obvious development, as this new environment would also subtly affect his aesthetic choices of materials and technique. With this painting, Hockney first used acrylic paints and with a new sense of light and color, he depicted his first swimming pool while synthesizing his first impressions of the affluence and glamour of Beverly Hills.
 
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html

California Art Collector (1964)
1964
Acrylic on canvas
152 x 177cm
Private collection ( sold at Sotheby's, New York, November 10, 1993, Lot 31)
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html

David Hockney
(1967)
 

His seminal work, “A Lawn Being Sprinkled,” is a defining piece in his series of California Dreaming paintings. Created in 1967, this acrylic on canvas painting measures 60 x 60 inches and depicts an everyday scene in Los Angeles.
Hockney’s signature style lends itself perfectly to the subject matter, which includes an abstraction of Californian lifestyle through a perfectly tended lawn with a sprinkler creating v-shaped mists of water. The clear blue sky in the background gives the painting a serene feel while adding depth to the composition.

https://www.artchive.com/artwork/a-lawn-being-sprinkled-david-hockney-1967/

A Lawn Being Sprinkled
1967
Acrylic on Canvas
152.4 × 152.4 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s, 16 May 2024)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6482947

 David Hockney
(1966)

This painting won the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 6 (now known as the John Moores Painting Prize) in 1967. It shows the communal swimming pool of an apartment block at 1145 Larrabee Street, Hollywood, just north of Sunset Boulevard. This was the home of one of Hockney's friends, the art dealer and gallery owner Nick Wilder. Hockney lived there from summer 1966 until early 1967 whilst at the same time renting a decrepit studio in central Los Angeles. Hockney’s boyfriend, Peter Schlesinger, a 19-year old painter whom he had met while teaching, is the naked figure climbing out of the pool.

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/peter-getting-out-of-nicks-pool

Peter getting out of Nick’s Pool
1966
Acrylic on Canvas
152.4 x 152.4 cm
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/peter-getting-out-of-nicks-pool

David Hockney
(1967)


Increasingly, Hockney is preoccupied with that fundamental task of painting—how to represent light, specifically, to naturalistic effect. “The Room, Tarzana” is based on a department store’s advertisement for bedroom furniture, but Hockney re-envisions the sunlit scene to show Peter Schlesinger lying on his stomach on the natty made single bed, in T-shirt and socks, his bare buttocks exposed at the paintings centre.

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1967

The Room, Tarzana
1967
Acrylic on canvas
242.3 x 242.3 cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(1964)

When Hockney went to Los Angeles in 1964, he was particularly fascinated by the use of water for irrigation and recreation in the semi-arid environment. He delighted in experimenting with various methods of depicting drops and sprays of water, attracted by the 'idea of painting moving water in a very slow and careful manner' (Stangos, p.99). He painted swimming pools and lawn sprinklers, but was equally intrigued by showers.
This painting includes some of the artist's favourite themes: moving water, the curtain, domestic scenes and homoerotic imagery. The curtain motif ( in particular, its flatness and similarities to a painting) had interested Hockney for several years. The source for the figure is a photograph taken by the Athletic Model Guild, which specialised in male nudes; the figure also has similarities to several images in Physique Pictorial. Hockney had intended from the beginning to add the foreground plant but, having difficulty with the feet, he bent the leaves to cover them. He began painting in acrylic during this first visit to Los Angeles, when colour rather than texture was his main concern.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-man-in-shower-in-beverly-hills-t03074
Nikos Stangos (ed.), David Hockney by David Hockney, London 1976

Man in Shower in Beverly Hills
1964
Acrylic paint on canvas
167 x 167 cm
Tate, London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-man-in-shower-in-beverly-hills-t03074

 David Hockney
(1961)

 Hockney’s infatuation with the pop singer Cliff Richard is the impetus for another Love painting, Doll Boy, in wich Richard is expressionistically rendered with the word “Queen” scrawled across his lower body.

 
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1960
 

Cliff Richard’s latest hit single was the Lionel Bart song, “Living Doll.” In a series of studies and drawings connected to a new painting, Doll Boy, Hockney made Cli himself the object of adulation rather than the girl implied in the song’s lyrics. Doll Boy is an important picture because it is one of the rst of his paintings in which a gure begins to emerge, clothed in a white dress on which is written the word “QUEEN,” leaving one in no doubt as to the meaning of the title.

David Hockney: The Biography, 1937-1975, Christopher Simon Sykes

 

Doll Boy
1961
Oil on canvas 
121.9 x 99 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-5215/doll-boy?filter%5Bhighlight%5D%5B0%5D=something%20new%20something%20old%20something%20desired&context=default