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 Photographer: Michel Ginies/SIPA via AP Photo Photographer: Michel Ginies/SIPA via AP Photo 
  
 David Hockney, the 81-year-old British painter of saturated landscapes and portraits, could become the most expensive living artist at auction this year. 
  
 Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” is being offered for sale to auction houses by billionaire Joe Lewis, who’s seeking at least $80 million for the work, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The current highest price for a living artist is $58.4 million for Jeff Koons’s orange balloon dog. 
  
 Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips have been approached, with Christie’s the front-runner, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the consignment hasn’t been formally announced. 
  
 Lewis has built a $5.5 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The foreign currency trader has parlayed his earnings into an array of assets that include London soccer team Tottenham Hotspur, real estate and masterpieces by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. 
  
 A current Tate Britain exhibition in London, “All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life," includes several works from Lewis’s collection. 
  
 Joe Lewis Photographer: Gary W. Green/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images 
  
 A representative for Lewis, the chairman and founder of Bahamas-based Tavistock Group, didn’t return emails or a telephone call seeking comment. Christie’s declined to comment on the work or the seller and it’s unclear whether it will be offered during October sales in London or at the semi-annual auctions in New York in November. 
  
 Iconic Image 
  
 The 1972 canvas depicts two men: One, fully clothed, stands at the edge of a swimming pool gazing down at another, who is submerged. The hilly landscape behind them was inspired by the South of France. The standing man is Peter Schlesinger, an artist and Hockney’s ex-boyfriend; Hockney was working on the painting at the time when their relationship was ending. 
  
 Recently exhibited in Hockney’s retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was also on loan from Lewis, the work is considered one of his most iconic images. A small study for the scene fetched $2.1 million in 2016. 
  
 Lewis’s asking price is a staggering figure even though prices for Hockney’s work have surged in recent months. Sotheby’s set two auction records for Hockney during the same sale in May. The most expensive, a 1990 landscape “Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica,” fetched $28.5 million. Works by the artist have generated a record $66.6 million at auction this year, up more than 80 percent from all his auction sales in 2017, according to Artprice, an online database. 
  
 — With assistance by Tom Metcalf ||||| This article is over 4 months old 
  
 Christie’s estimates Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) could fetch $80m 
  
 A swimming pool painting by David Hockney could become the most valuable work of art by a living artist sold at auction. 
  
 Christie’s in New York announced on Thursday that it was selling Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) with an estimate in the region of $80m (£61m). The painting, a star of Hockney’s recent retrospective, is reportedly owned by Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based billionaire and owner of Tottenham Hotspur. 
  
 Anywhere near the estimate, which is nearly three times the price of the most expensive Hockney sold at auction to date, would break the record. Jeff Koons holds the title after his stainless steel Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for $58m in 2013. Next is Gerhard Richter, the most expensive European artist, after his Abstraktes Bild (1988) sold in London in 2015 for £30.4m (then $46m). 
  
 Timeline The 10 most expensive works of art sold at auction Show Hide See a gallery of the world's most expensive paintings Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christie’s ($450.3m, including auction house premium) One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. The painting sold for $119,922,500 Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) sold at Christie's in New York for $106,482,500 L’homme qui Marche I (1961) by Alberto Giacometti sold for £65,001,250 ($105,182,398) at Sotheby’s in London Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby's in New York for $104,168,000 Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)went under the hammer at Christie’s New York and sold for $87,936,000 Francis Bacon’s Triptych (1976) sold for $85.9m to oligarch Roman Abramovich A Chinese 18th century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase sold for £53,100,000 ($85,921,461) at Bainbridges auction house in London Dora Maar au Chat (1941) by Pablo Picasso sold for £51,560,080 ($83,429,503) at Sotheby's in London Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet (1890) by Vincent van Gogh sold for $82,500,000 (£50,985,692) at Christie’s in New York 
  
 The most expensive Hockney auctioned to date is Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica, which sold at Sotheby’s New York this year for $28.5m. 
  
 Alex Rotter, co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, said Hockney’s pool painting was “one of the great masterpieces of the modern era”. 
  
 The 1972 work, set against a gorgeous, green, hilly landscape, shows a man swimming underwater in the pool watched by another man, Hockney’s ex-boyfriend Peter Schlesinger. 
  
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeff Koons holds the sale record for a piece of art by a living artist with Balloon Dog (Orange), Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP 
  
 Rotter said: “David Hockney’s brilliance as an artist is on full display with this monumental canvas, which encapsulates the essence of the idealised poolside landscape, and the tremendous complexity that exists within human relationships. 
  
 “With this painting, Hockney cemented his placement within the realm of history’s most venerated artists, and come November it is poised to become the most valuable work of art by a living artist ever sold at auction.” 
  
 Exhibition on Screen: David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts review – a master in sharp focus Read more 
  
 Its reported owner, 81-year-old Lewis, is a passionate collector of art, owning works by Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and Lucian Freud. 
  
 The pool painting, 3 metres wide, was an unquestionable standout at Tate Britain’s Hockney retrospective last year and was then displayed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 
  
 Before its sale in New York in November, the work will be exhibited in Hong Kong on 28-29 September, London on 3-5 October and Los Angeles on 23-27 October. ||||| Allyssia Alleyne , CNN Written by 
  
 A well-known painting by British artist David Hockney is poised to smash the record for a work by a living artist sold at auction. 
  
 "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" is set to be sold at a Christie's sale in November, at an estimated price of $80 million. The current record was set by Jeff Koons in 2013, when his "Balloon Dog" sold for $58.4 million. 
  
 Why is art so expensive? 
  
 Alex Rotter, co-chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie's, called the 1972 painting "one of the great masterpieces of the modern era." 
  
 "David Hockney's brilliance as an artist is on full display with this monumental canvas, which encapsulates the essence of the idealized poolside landscape, and the tremendous complexity that exists within human relationships," Rotter said in a statement. "With this painting, Hockney cemented his placement within the realm of history's most venerated artists." 
  
 World's most popular artist 
  
 "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" (1972) by David Hockney Credit: Courtesy Christie's 
  
 Now 81, David Hockney is regarded as one of the world's most popular artists . Well over a million visitors to his attended his last retrospective, hosted by Tate Modern, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pompidou Center in 2017 and 2018, and his current auction record stands at $28.5 million. 
  
 Swimming pools have been one of the artist's muses since he first moved to California from England in 1964. 
  
 "I always loved swimming pools, all the wiggly lines they make," he told CNN in 2017. "If you photograph them, it freezes them whereas if you use paint, you can have wiggly lines that wiggle." 
  
 Hockney at 80: An encounter with the artist 
  
 "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" has long been in private hands (Christie's has not revealed the identity of the seller) but is still one of Hockney's most recognizable works. 
  
 The double portrait shows a young man standing on the pool's edge, looking down at submerged swimmer. The swimmer is based on Hockney's former lover, Californian artist Peter Schlesinger, with whom he had broken up a year prior. (A study for the painting sold for $2.1 million at a 2016 Sotheby's auction.) 
  
 Before the painting is offered at Christie's on Nov. 15, it will be exhibited in Hong Kong, London and Los Angeles. ||||| The most recent years of David Hockney’s career have been the most prolific in decades, perhaps thanks in part to the winding, tortuous roads of the Hollywood Hills that lead to his studio. They do wonders to minimize the risk of impromptu visitors. 
  
 “I like visitors, but couldn’t really work in London or New York, because I’d have too many,” he tells AD on a recent studio visit. “Here we know who’s coming, so we can plan it. I’ve always liked L.A. for that.” 
  
 Beloved the world over, Hockney’s identity is seemingly split in two. Born and bred in the North of England, he’s the default titleholder of Britain’s most beloved living artist, and the English confirm that despite the decades he’s spent in the United States, Hockney’s classic Yorkshire accent remains unchanged. It’s the images of Hockney’s current home, Los Angeles, however, that burn most brightly in the collective memory. His best-known works date back to his arrival in the 1960s, when he immortalized the intense sunlight and sensuousness of L.A. domestic bliss in unmixed, ultrasaturated colors. Decades later, he seems to find it quite funny that everyone still talks about the swimming pool paintings. 
  
 “I mean, I didn’t do that many,” he says—perhaps 12 in a vast and varied body of work. But “I like swimming,” he graciously adds. “It’s the only exercise I get.” 
  
 As usual, he’s been in the studio since nine this morning. And as with most great minds, he adheres to an established sartorial routine (see Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodies, or Queen Elizabeth’s Launer handbags) that sees a few key daily variations: Today the cardigan is navy blue with pink stripes, the collared shirt is white, the circular spectacles are a pale yellow sheet metal. No flat cap on this occasion. We sit in two well-worn armchairs on an oriental rug because his airy, high-ceilinged studio also functions as his living room. 
  
 Photo: © David Hockney 
  
 Drawn to the freedom of its privacy, Hockney bought this house in 1978 and added his studio in 1983. On a quiet street in the Hollywood Hills, the placid gray of his outward-facing two-car garage belies the riot inside: hot pink, cobalt blue, and turquoise walls shrouded with tropical foliage. Hockney, whose eyes are the standardized, staggering blue of an L.A. swimming pool, actually lives inside a Hockney painting. He took an eight-year hiatus from L.A. in Yorkshire before permanently returning during a wave of tragedy in 2013. He had not only suffered a stroke, but the sudden death of a young assistant, which led his work into a period of somber charcoal drawings. 
  
 The difference in Hockney’s work since his return to Southern California has been profound. It’s here that he painted the searingly bright "82 Portraits and 1 Still-life," a Royal Academy of Arts, London, exhibition that’s traveled to Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, Italy, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art en route to the Guggenheim Bilbao. To sit for a Hockney portrait required “a certain amount of patience and concentration,” says subject and gallerist Larry Gagosian, regretting “that I didn’t hold my stomach in enough.” He recounts how over the course of a typical eight-hour day, Hockney broke the intensity of his focus for only an hour during lunch. Most of the 82 portraits, including those of Hockney’s longtime assistant, various curators, his housekeeper, and his Chicago gallerist, Paul Gray of Richard Gray Gallery, took him three days. (Gagosian and fellow sitters John Baldessari and Frank Gehry, pressed for time, gave Hockney only two.) 
  
 Although he’s been widely reported to smoke Camel Wides, he pulls a Davidoff from a pile of packs on the rolling metal cart between us. At age 81, he reports no aches or pains, only the longtime deterioration of his hearing—and no plans, thus far, to quit smoking. 
  
 What I’m really wanting to do is alter photography. 
  
 “The people telling me to stop smoking are saying it’s about time that I should think about my body,” he says with a tone of disbelief. “I’ve gotten to be 81 not thinking about it, so what’s the trouble?” 
  
 As popular as he is, the artist rarely follows popular consensus. Today, for example, Hockney derides movie critics for failing Fellini’s 1984 film And the Ship Sails On . Where it had taken Hockney four trips to the cinema to understand that it was “all about the screen,” the filmmaker’s foil to the artist’s canvas, most had only gone once. 
  
 “The first reviews didn’t see the film at all!” he says. “They thought it was merely about the plot. It wasn’t, and I knew that.” 
  
 This is the essential difference between Hockney and the rest of the world: Where most only look, he takes the time to see, a recurring course of exploration across a wide array of media. 
  
 Photo: © David Hockney 
  
 On one of several iPads in his studio, he summons the footage of The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods , a video installation slated to run at Richard Gray Gallery’s warehouse exhibition space in Chicago starting September 13. To create the work, Hockney drove down a single country road during four distinct parts of the year, with nine separate cameras attached to the front of a jeep. In the gallery, each season plays simultaneously on four walls with nine monitors each, as if you were looking through the compound eye of an insect. The effect, “gives us a much more fluid perspective, and of course a wider time frame, making it possible to see more of where we have been and where we are going,” Hockney explains. “More like real life, perhaps.” 
  
 That sentiment dates back to Pearblossom Highway , a seminal work in terms of Hockney’s fascination with multipoint, Picasso-like simultaneity of perspective. In 1986, he had traveled to the outskirts of Los Angeles and taken 850 close-up photographs of a desert road: the stop sign, the Joshua trees, the detritus that had been tossed onto the shoulder. Assembled together as a collage, the many photos put the single image in motion. Each individual snapshot has its own perspective, its own vanishing point, and so the eye has to travel—it takes a moment to be fully seen. 
  
 James Prinz Photography 
  
 The Pearblossom Highway method has reappeared throughout Hockney’s career in different forms, from Polaroids to TV screens. And ”now with digits you can alter perspective,” he says, referring to another piece for the Richard Gray show hanging high on the studio wall. It’s a nearly 30-foot-long, uncannily vivid composite image of a few of Hockney’s friends, seated, standing, and milling about in his studio. Each subject inexplicably pops; the not-so-hidden secret is that they’re made of hundreds of close-up digital photos seamlessly stitched into a mass of undetectable vanishing points. “The perspective is all over the place,” Hockney explains. It’s like a 2018 Pearblossom Highway redux. “You can look at it for a long time.” 
  
 For Hockney, the current state of digital photography has done little to hold the viewer’s gaze as much. To his disappointment, the ease and expediency of modern technology has made the art form too quick and too flat, the photographer too distantly engaged. “Everyone’s a photographer these days,” he laments. (Having accepted the death of chemical photography long ago, he comfortably assures that painting will never die. “Otherwise all we’d have is photography, and that’s just not good enough.”) 
  
 Photo: Amanda Edwards © Museum Associates/LACMA 
  
 He’s often said that working in the studio makes him feel like he’s 30, and unsurprisingly he finds himself in the studio every day, entering the seventh decade of his career still high on ambition. “What I’m really wanting to do is alter photography,” he says, an indication that his experimental impulse hasn’t lessened a bit with age. His body of work is so widely varied in terms of content, form, and medium that he was once accused of “skimming” through his stylistic evolution. This absence of restraint, however, from experimentation, from color, or from content, has been the one throughline over the years. 
  
 “I’ve always done what I want to do and just searched for it,” he says. “I go on searching, really. And I’m still searching.” 
  
 RELATED: Artist David Hockney’s House on the West Coast ||||| Image copyright PA Image caption A blurred figure walking past David Hockney's Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica 
  
 A David Hockney painting has sold for $28.5m (£21.1m) - more than double the previous auction record for the artist. 
  
 Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica, a large-scale oil painting dating from 1990, was sold to a private Asian collector at Sotheby's on Wednesday. 
  
 The record price for a Hockney had already been broken once when Piscine de Medianoche (Paper Pool 30) fetched $11.74m (£8.7m) earlier in the evening. 
  
 The previous record of $11.7m, for Woldgate Woods, was set in 2016. 
  
 Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica depicts the Californian hills in bright, bold colours, and was described by Sotheby's as "a highly personal and whimsical landscape brimming with joie de vivre". 
  
 The painting is an homage to the route the Bradford-born artist would take from his house in the Hollywood Hills to his studio on Santa Monica Boulevard while listening to opera - which he dubbed his Wagner drive. 
  
 He wrote in 1993: "Anyone who had been on my Wagner drive would immediately recognise Pacific Coast Highway [and Santa Monica] - a multiple view of Santa Monica Bay and the mountains." 
  
 Image copyright PA/Sothebys Image caption David Hockney's Piscine de Medianoche used coloured and pressed paper pulp 
  
 Piscine de Medianoche, from 1978, was inspired by his friend Kenneth Tyler's swimming pool in Westchester County, New York. It was bought by a private American collector. 
  
 The auction house said demand for works by the 80-year-old artist was at an "all-time high", with four of his five highest auction prices being set in the past 18 months. 
  
 Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |||||
Output:

assistant: In May, British painter David Hockney more than doubled his previous auction record with the $28.5 million sale of 1990's "Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica," per the BBC. Now, one of his most recognizable paintings could fetch nearly three times as much, reports CNN. In November, "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)"—one of a dozen Hockney paintings featuring swimming pools, per Architectural Digest—is expected to become the most valuable artwork by a living artist sold at auction. Christie's has set an estimate of $80 million, which would dwarf the $58.4 million auction price for Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog (Orange)," sold in 2013, per the Guardian. The 81-year-old Hockney's 1972 painting is "one of the great masterpieces of the modern era," says Christie's rep Alex Rotter. The painting depicts a man looking down at a swimmer, believed to represent Hockney's former lover, Peter Schlesinger. It "encapsulates the essence of the idealized poolside landscape, and the tremendous complexity that exists within human relationships," Rotter says. Wrote Tim Adams at the Guardian, "Hockney appears to be dramatizing the distance between subject and object." Owned by British billionaire Joe Lewis, the painting will go on display in Hong Kong, London, and Los Angeles, before hitting the auction block in New York on Nov. 15, reports Bloomberg.