Movie Review - - At Film Festival: 'A Bigger Splash':5 Shorts at Whitney - NYTimes.com At Film Festival: 'A Bigger Splash':5 Shorts at Whitney By VINCENT CANBY, LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: October 4, 1974 "A Bigger Splash," which was shown at the New York Film Festival last night, is a fiction film about David Hockney, one of the more successful and durable of the English pop artists to come out of the nineteen-sixties, in which Mr. Hockney and his friends play themselves in situations that may or may not have happened in life. A note in the festival program draws a parallel between what Jack Hazan, the director-cameraman-producer of this film, is doing in "A Bigger Splash" and what Mr. Hockney's paintings do when the artist takes details from life, strips them to their essential lines and colors, then projects them into larger-than-life reality onto huge canvases.

Perhaps because most movie screens, including the one at Alice Tully Hall (where the film will be repeated tonight), are already larger than life, the effect of this fragmented, often self-conscious film is to make the subject seem sort of small and drab, a fact that is immediately denied whenever we are given a chance to look at the paintings themselves. There is a kind of story line to the film, which, we're told, was three years in the making. It's about Mr. Hockney's inability to finish a painting when his lover for the last five years, another artist named Peter Schlesinger, walks out on him. His friends worry about him. They worry about a forthcoming show, and they worry about the décor of his house. "It looks like a waiting room now," says Celia Birtwell, a beautiful young woman who looks a lot like Andy Warhol's Viva. Another friend says, "When love goes wrong, it's more than two people suffer." In these moments, there's a suggestion of the satire that is almost always evident in Mr.

Hockney's paintings, but the film's Hockney-like gags are mostly blunt, as when Henry Geldzahler of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is "discovered" striking the pose in which Mr. Hockney once painted him. The manner of making the film—in London, Geneva, California and New York, whenever the artist's schedule permitted—has as much to do with the non-content of the film as with its style. There are only the slightest traces of the outrageous self-promotion and put-on that once were so much a part of the pop scene. "A Bigger Splash" is unforgivably solemn, something that Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey would never have allowed. 5 Shorts at Whitney "Transformations" is the blanket title covering a well-organized exhibition of five short films exploring motion pictures as the vehicle of expression of pure art. The exhibition opened yesterday for a week's run in the New American Filmmakers Series at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Of the five, which range in length from 6 to 35 minutes, the least imaginative was "Birds of Paradise," by Mike Lovell, in which the soaking of film in bleach produced whitened patterns washing across repetitive shots of caged vultures. More active and successful in working out thematic variations were Steve Osborn with "Polyphemus," a piece of cinematic choreography that makes the camera and a mirror partners in a contredanse; Sheldon Brown's "Clean Gate!!," fugal in the increasing complexity of its patterns; Mr. Brown's "Frame/Rate Declension" in which juxtaposed vertical film strips moving at changing speeds provide a tapestry of images, and David Hykes's "Moving Parts," a combination of eerie sound and colored particles that form a kaleidoscopic universe, at once pastoral and nightmarish. A BIGGER SPLASH, directed and produced by Jack Hazan; screenplay by Mr. Hazan and David Mingay; director of photography, Mr. Hazan; editor, Mr. Mingay; music, Patrick Gowers and Greg Bailey; a Buzzy Enterprises Ltd., production. Running time: 105 minutes.

At the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Painter . . . . . David Hockney U B U W E B - Film & Video: David Hockney - A Bigger Splash (1974) A Bigger Splash (1974) At Film Festival: 'A Bigger Splash' By VINCENT CANBY, LAWRENCE VAN GELDER New York Times "A Bigger Splash," which was shown at the New York Film Festival last night, is a fiction film about David Hockney, one of the more successful and durable of the English pop artists to come out of the nineteen-sixties, in which Mr. Hockney and his friends play themselves in situations that may or may not have happened in life. A note in the festival program draws a parallel between what Jack Hazan, the director-cameraman-producer of this film, is doing in "A Bigger Splash" and what Mr. Hockney's paintings do when the artist takes details from life, strips them to their essential lines and colors, then projects them into larger-than-life reality onto huge canvases.

Perhaps because most movie screens, including the one at Alice Tully Hall (where the film will be repeated tonight), are already larger than life, the effect of this fragmented, often self-conscious film is to make the subject seem sort of small and drab, a fact that is immediately denied whenever we are given a chance to look at the paintings themselves. There is a kind of story line to the film, which, we're told, was three years in the making. It's about Mr. Hockney's inability to finish a painting when his lover for the last five years, another artist named Peter Schlesinger, walks out on him. His friends worry about him. They worry about a forthcoming show, and they worry about the décor of his house. "It looks like a waiting room now," says Celia Birtwell, a beautiful young woman who looks a lot like Andy Warhol's Viva. Another friend says, "When love goes wrong, it's more than two people suffer." In these moments, there's a suggestion of the satire that is almost always evident in Mr.

Hockney's paintings, but the film's Hockney-like gags are mostly blunt, as when Henry Geldzahler of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is "discovered" striking the pose in which Mr. Hockney once painted him. The manner of making the film—in London, Geneva, California and New York, whenever the artist's schedule permitted—has as much to do with the non-content of the film as with its style. There are only the slightest traces of the outrageous self-promotion and put-on that once were so much a part of the pop scene. "A Bigger Splash" is unforgivably solemn, something that Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey would never have allowed. The Only Way is Hockney | Tate The Only Way is Hockney Fiontan Moran Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd.

Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd. David Hockney’s 1967 painting A Bigger Splash is one of the most popular works in the Tate collection. However, many may not know that David Hockney had his own reality show. Well almost. In 1971 the filmmaker Jack Hazan followed the artist for three years documenting Hockney’s work, life and social circle that culminated in the 1974 feature-length film also titled A Bigger Splash. Despite Hockney’s ambivalence towards the project, the film was a success and a short clip is shown in the opening room of A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance .

Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd. Documentaries of artists can often contribute to the way we think about their work. This is true of Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenburg’s film of Jackson Pollock painting, which is in the exhibition, where the artist is shown deep in concentration, dripping paint onto a canvas placed on the floor. While this film depicts a recognisable representation of the private, solitary artist at work, Hazan’s film of Hockney is very different. In a manner very similar to reality-TV shows like The Only Way is Essex or more appropriately Made in Chelsea, A Bigger Splash is a film that initially appears to be a documentary but is in fact a combination of the real and the imagined. Described by designer and co-star Ossie Clark as ‘truer than the truth’, this ‘scripted reality’ involved Hockney and his circle playing themselves, at home and play in scenarios that were to some degree instigated by Hazan.

The film is both a fascinating document of the artist’s world in 1970s London, and a drama where Hockney’s paintings are used as a provisional stage set and storyboard for action – the A Bigger Splash painting is made real in a scene involving naked men diving into a pool, and the designer Ossie Clark stands (with his pet cat) in front of his portrait with wife Celia Birtwell, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy 1970-1 at the Tate Gallery. Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd. But how does this relate to Hockney’s A Bigger Splash and the relationship between painting and performance? For the exhibition, we have been thinking about alternative histories of how painting was utilised beyond the realm of the canvas and what Hazan’s film highlights is how Hockney’s art and world (including the parties, conversations and socialising) were integral components of his artistic enterprise, something that is often associated with his contemporary Andy Warhol.

Hockney was surrounded by people who were interested in painting their own version of reality, whether through the escapist fashion designs of Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark or the hand-painted wooden palm trees of Mo McDermott. Hockney’s paintings of this period re-imagined what painting can do. His depiction of a splash looks like an abstract expressionist gestural mark, when it is in fact the product of two weeks of painted labour; and likewise Hazan’s film suggests a reality but is in fact it’s own artwork composed from everyday life. The conflation of the real and the imagined - art and life, the private space of the studio or the dressing room and the public spaces of the gallery or street - is something that this exhibition is drawing attention to and is developed in the work of the contemporary artists present in the show, such as Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s imagined bedroom for Jean Cocteau and Lucy McKenzie’s trompe l’oeil paintings. Each presents an experience and broader understanding of painting that enable the viewer to become a part of the action or world imagined by the artists.

Tags: A Bigger Splash (1973) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Semi-fictionalized documentary biopic of British artist David Hockney. After a difficult break-up, Hockney is left unable to paint, much to the concern of his friends. The title was named after Hockney's pop-art painting 'A Bigger Splash'. Director: Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 126 titles created 02 Sep 2013 a list of 43 titles created 05 Jan 2015 a list of 2027 titles created 21 Jul 2015 a list of 1164 titles created 07 Sep 2015 a list of 494 titles created 9 months ago Title: A Bigger Splash (1973) 5.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 1 win & 1 nomination. See more awards » Photos The vacation of a famous rock star and a filmmaker in Italy is disrupted by the unexpected visit of an old friend and his daughter. Director: Luca Guadagnino In France, lovers Marianne and Jean-Paul spend their vacation in a villa near St-Tropez. Marianne invites her former lover, Harry, and his teenage daughter to stay. Tension rises between them, especially when Jean-Paul seduces Penelope.

Director: Jacques Deray After a casual encounter, a brokenhearted woman decides to confront her life and the most important events about her stranded daughter. Director: Pedro Almodóvar Hockney sees the charismatic artist take director Randall Wright on an exclusive tour of his archives and into his studio, where he still paints seven days a week. The film, which looks ... See full summary » Director: Randall Wright Edit Storyline When David Hockney's beautiful lover, Peter Schlesinger, breaks up with him, it leaves David a complete emotional wreck. An artist, he suddenly finds himself unable to create anything, and is awash in depression and loneliness. After a time, David is able to find inspiration in his backyard swimming pool, and he begins a portrait of it. This unique docudrama presents a semi-fictionalized account of the story behind one of Hockney's most popular paintings.

Written by Polly_Kat 10 April 1975 (Netherlands) See more » Filming Locations: Referenced in Cinemania (2002) See more » Frequently Asked Questions (Los Angeles, Ca.) – See all my reviews Artist David Hockney is such a lively colorful figure that one might expect a film about his life and art to be a bubbly romp. But Jack Hazan takes quite a different route. He followed Hockney and his circle of friends around for quite a considerable amount of time -- shooting in 35mm, rather than 16mm as was popular for documentary films at this time. Moreover, rather than aim for a "cinema verite" styled "truth," Hazan deals in fantasy and melodrama. The action covers a period in which Hockney and his lover and model, Peter Schlesinger, are breaking up. Hockney is having what appears to be a somewhat difficult time finishing a large canvas for which Schlesinger was the subject, and Hazan suggests that the end of the relationship played a part in this difficulty. But he only suggests. He doesn't offer a set conclusion.

What he does do is utilize film as means of entering Hockney's visual world. Many of his close friends and associates, including Ozzie Clark, Celia Birtwell, Patrick Procktor and Henry Geldzahler make appearances conversing with Hockney -- whose verbal wit is everywhere apparent. Most daring of all is scene in which Schlesinger and another young man make love. When he finally saw the results Hockney was both surprised and slightly appalled. "Two hours of weeping music," he called it. No surprise as "A Bigger Splash" gets a lot closer to Hockney's inner and outer life than he probably imagined it would. A very important film for art lovers, and a very important piece of gay cinema. 9 of 13 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes How 1970s Hockney film pre-empted reality TV - BBC News How 1970s Hockney film pre-empted reality TV By Vincent Dowd Arts correspondent, BBC World Service 30 January 2012 Close share panel Image caption A Bigger Splash was filmed intermittently between 1971 and 1973 With the media full of coverage of A Bigger Picture, Hockney's new show of Yorkshire landscapes at the Royal Academy, the 1970s movie A Bigger Splash is a reminder of the fashionable young artist before he became the Grand Old Man of British art and seems to anticipate elements of reality TV by three decades. A Bigger Splash starts with a caption which says 'June 1973, Geneva'. Then comes a scene, apparently in a hotel room, where David Hockney is flirting with a young man called Joe. The film's director, Jack Hazan, laughs when he thinks about the shoot. "We were never in Switzerland.

It was a hotel in London, but David Hockney never even went there; I just did a couple of establishing shots and everything else was his flat." It's a fictionalised replica of the era: it's all artifice, it's not fly on the wall - these things didn't really happen Jack Hazan Yet today one Hockney biography refers to the Geneva trip as an actual event. "Well, that's the power of film," says Hazan. "People tend to believe what's in front of them. There are date captions throughout the film but they're just a device." In the '60s people had thought of Hockney primarily as a portrait painter, and Jack Hazan's original idea had been to look at the people who sat for him. "But the project changed totally as we went along. David Hockney had recently broken up with his boyfriend Peter Schlesinger and we realised that was the drama we had to follow." Prepared plot The opening credits introduce the characters as though it's a drama: Hockney, Schlesinger, the designers Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark, Hockney's assistant Mo McDermott.

There's an intense Hollywood-style score and Hazan's obvious skills as a lighting cameraman - he worked on 35mm film - mean the movie looks better than many feature films of the period. Image caption Hockney was originally upset by the intimacy of the finished film "I didn't want to direct the action too much," says Hazan. "If it was a scene, say, between David and Mo McDermott. I'd give one of them a question to ask, just to get things going. "But I only gave that cue to one person, so the other had to react on camera. After that I just followed the conversation. I plotted out what I wanted on the back of an envelope the evening before." The result - halfway between scripted drama and an intimate documentary portrait - is something which the producers of The Only Way is Essex would recognise. Hazan discovered that Hockney was dedicated to his work above all else. "He was completely prolific as a painter; it was all he wanted to do. "If you talked to him, after a couple of minutes he'd just drift away back to his studio and start painting again.

But emotionally he was very upset at this time after the break-up with Peter Schlesinger." The film's title was borrowed from Hockney's famous 1967 painting A Bigger Splash, an image of a Californian swimming pool that remains one of Hockney's best-known works. X-rated Hazan thinks the pool sequences were important to the film. "They identified David Hockney in those years. In fact, I think it's still how many people think of him. "There are two pools on screen. One was in Palm Desert near Palm Springs. The other was in Beverly Hills and belonged to Betty Freeman who was a great supporter of music and art." Image caption Hockney offered Hazan £20,000 to destroy his movie The film is now rated 15. But in 1974 the nudity in the pool sequences (and a scene in London of Peter making love to an unidentified young man) attracted what was then an X certificate. Yet Hazan denies he was just trying to make a sexy movie.

"If the pools look sexy and the boys look sexy, that's because I was following David Hockney's paintings." Hockney hadn't taken much interest in the details of filming - in fact there are large sections in which he doesn't appear at all. He'd expected something more like a traditional documentary and when finally he saw the film he was extremely unhappy - he thought it revealed too much of his private life. Christopher Simon Sykes has just published the first volume of his biography of the artist, taking him up to the mid 1970s. "Peter Schlesinger had been the first true love affair of David's life. Peter had an older man who he looked up to and respected; David had this absolutely perfect Californian boy - the boy he'd always dreamed of. "So the break-up was the first truly terrible thing which ever happened to David. He was hugely uncomfortable with seeing it all depicted on screen, even though of course it was semi-fictionalised." Hockney offered Hazan £20,000 to destroy his movie. Hazan refused and eventually A Bigger Splash became a modest hit that won some excellent reviews at the 1974 Cannes Festival.

The film is a valuable record of a world now vanished. Its view of the shabby Bohemia of early '70s London is unique. "But it's a fictionalised replica of the era: it's all artifice. It's not fly on the wall. These things didn't really happen," says Jack Hazan Forty years on, he recalls one early comment on the film. "Ossie Clark said it was truer than the truth. I liked that." A Bigger Splash is released by the BFI on DVD and Blu-ray on 30 January. A Bigger Splash, DVD review - Telegraph A Bigger Splash, DVD review Philip Horne admires Jack Hazan's artful 1974 film about David Hockney.

4 David Hockney and Peter Schlesinger in 'A Bigger Splash' Photo: Moviestore Collection/ Rex Feat By Philip Horne 6:24PM GMT 27 Jan 2012 15 cert, BFI, £19.95 Jack Hazan ’s slow, artful, disturbing 1974 film about David Hockney and his gay inner circle during the years 1971-73 has been described by no lesser a figure than Martin Scorsese as "one of the finest films I have seen about an artist and his work". Scorsese said he was inspired by its flat, alienated shooting style while shooting his own Taxi Driver the following year. Certainly the sense of quiet, dull, yet still tense rooms can be traced in Scorsese's film – maybe also the ironic counterpoint of sound and vision, the clash of apparently undramatic images with the superb, mournful score by Patrick Gowers.

It’s a model too, more directly, for Scorsese’s unjustly neglected 1989 short film Life Lessons (his contribution to New York Stories), which also constructs a narrative round the rhythm of a famous painter’s preparation for a show, in relation to the love of an older artist for a beautiful younger one (only in that case a female one). Of course, the timeliness of this welcome release stems from its coinciding with the huge Hockney show which has just opened at the Royal Academy . It’s sometimes called a documentary, and it’s certainly a wonderfully shot document of its mostly rather drab time, but A Bigger Splash is, as Hazan says in a revealing interview, "all an illusion". It creates, by pre-planned staging and editing its own often surreal romantic fiction – of Hockney’s difficulties in producing work for his next show because of his break-up with the beautiful young Californian painter Peter Schlesinger – not the subject of the painting ‘A Bigger Splash’ itself, but painted in and beside pools by Hockney in other works. Related Articles David Hockney: English Pop Artist Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1) Tate Collection.

For a guide to the best of modern UK painters (1960-2000), see Contemporary British Painting . Beloved English Artist The painter, printmaker, photographer and stage designer David Hockney is one of the most successful and influential of all living English artists. Based in America for much of his adult creative life, his reputation rests on his fine drawing skills, as well as his innovative work in the field of printmaking and photocollage. Seen as a founding member of the British Pop Art movement in the 1960s, he has been the subject of countless solo exhibitions worldwide including a major touring retrospectives staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Tate Gallery, London in 1988, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1995-6). Although he has attracted a degree of controversy for his gay status, he remains - along with JMW Turner and John Constable - one of the most popular of all English artists, and without question the most famous Yorkshire man in the world of contemporary art .

(Note: For a comparison with other painters, see: Top Contemporary Artists .) MODERN ARTISTS For an explanation of aesthetics, and a discussion of issues, see: Art Definition & Meaning . Early Days Born in Bradford, the fourth of five children, Hockney gained a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School where his passion for art made him determined to become an artist and led him to request a transfer to art school. This was reluctantly granted by his parents but only after he had demonstrated the strength of his convictions with a campaign of non-conformity in the classroom, doodling and drawing comic strips in notebooks instead of working at his lessons. He would also pass away afternoons at Sunday School drawing cartoons of Jesus. Yet at the same time his obvious artistic talents won him prizes and recognition. In the end, his parents yielded and sent him to the Bradford School of Art, where he studied anatomy, linear perspective and drawing from the nude, displaying his precocious draughtsmanship in a series of portraits, and oil paintings . Above all, he began to understand that painting was a process of seeing and thinking, rather than mere imitation.

His early artwork was abstract while he admired the compositions of painters such as Francis Bacon , and he would often travel to London to visit various art shows. He also started producing his first colour lithographs . In 1957, he passed the National Diploma in Design Examination with honours, after which he did his 2 years of National Service as a hospital orderly due to his conscientious objector status as a Methodist. He then began a 3-year postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art in London, along with fellow students R.B. Kitaj, Allan Jones, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier and Patrick Caulfield. Royal College of Art Hockney immediately felt at home in the atmosphere and surroundings of the Royal College, thriving in the kinship of fellow artists, and entered an important period of self-discovery. In particular, he found himself free to talk about his gender orientation with other gay men. First and foremost however, he was a dedicated and highly motivated student, determined to explore as many art forms as possible in order to discover his own style. Thus he turned initially to drawing from life in two elaborate studies of a skeleton before experimenting with abstract art .

He was also searching for ways of incorporating a personal subject-matter into his art. This led him into painting works about his favourite poetry and vegetarianism, and he even began incorporating allusions to his gender orientation, writing words such as "queer" and "unorthodox lover" in some of his pictures. These inscriptions soon gave way to more overt declarations in a series of paintings produced in 196061 on the subject of gay love, which included We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961). The impact of its subject-matter was enhanced by the rudimentary almost childishly drawn figures, scrawled graffiti and the rough texture of the painting surface. These pictures derived much from the faux-naïf idiom of Jean Dubuffet as well as the paintings of Picasso , whose 1960 retrospective at the Tate Gallery had a major impact on Hockney's style. These early irreverent, ironic 'pop' paintings plus his more formal works, together with his growing interest in various forms of graphic art and printwork, rapidly marked Hockney as an artist of great potential.

Still only 23, the versatility and flair of his painting, allied to his maturing ebulliant personality lent him an aura of authority. He was already showing at various exhibitions of modern art , including the London Group 1960. Leading Light of British Pop Art In 1961, along with Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Allen Jones, RB Kitaj and Peter Phillips, Hockney exhibited at the Young Contemporaries Exhibition (an annual show of works by British art students): an event which first drew attention to the emerging style of British Pop art, and brought Hockney added fame as one of its ringleaders. During the summer he sold several paintings to pay for his first trip to New York, where he and friends visited most of the city's galleries and museums, as well as the trendy gay spots. While there, he utilized the facilities of the Pratt Institute to work on his sketching and painting, including an idea for a modern version of William Hogarth's "Rake's Progress," a printing project which he completed two years later. The atmosphere of personal freedom which he encountered in New York also fuelled his self-discovery. He started bleaching his hair and began to present a new image.

Gold Medal and Early Financial Success Returning to England in the fall to complete his studies at the Royal College of Art, Hockney attracted significant attention from critics, professors, and fellow students at several student exhibitions. His artwork had a poetic feel, and reintroduced narrative in a modern way with noticable irony. In early 1962 he exemplified his growing range with an exhibition of a set of paintings under the title Demonstrations of Versatility, each executed in a different style - flat, illusionistic, scenic, genre-style. The force of Hockney's draughtsmanship, his genre-painting , portraiture, literary influences, strongly personal approach, and increasing maturity as a person, all combined to enable him to establish a clear artistic identity for himself. Despite failing his Art History exams he was awarded the Royal College of Art gold medal for 1962. The following year, he sold the etchings of his updated version of Rakes Progess for the amazing sum of £5,000. This level of commercial success meant that he became independent quite soon after leaving college and, unlike the majority of his contemporaries, did not have to rely on teaching in order to make ends meet.

From this time on, he was represented by the influential art dealer John Kasmin. Los Angeles In 1963, after finishing his studies, Hockney travelled to New York, Berlin and Egypt to get inspiration and ideas for illustrations. In New York he met Andy Warhol , who - along with Roy Lichtenstein - was one of the rising stars of American Pop art. He also saw a friend, Henry Geldzahler, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who encouraged him to visit Los Angeles - which Hockney did at the end of the year. It was everything he expected and more. He arrived knowing nobody, and yet in the space of 7-days he found a place to stay in Santa Monica, arranged a studio for himself, passed the driving test, bought a car, and even drove to Las Vegas where he won some money gambling. The Los Angeles lifestyle and landscape became important features of Hockney's work, in more ways than one. Passing much of the day on the Santa Monica waterfront, he would admire the beautiful boys who paraded along the beach.

To capture the colourful California urban landscape he switched from his beloved oils to the newer medium of acrylics , and developed his own signature style of naturalistic-realistic painting. His 1964 work The California Collector included his first depiction of an LA swimming pool, an image he would repeat countless times, employing a flat, modern manner with looping wavy lines to portray the moving water, and a semi-abstract jigsaw-puzzle surface reminiscent of works by Jean Dubuffet. In addition to pools, his subjects also included the sculpted Californian men he encountered, as in works like Man in Shower in Beverly Hills (1964), while he also began using photography , especially photomontage, to develop his compositions. As one might expect, the Riviera-type anything-goes environment of California had a major impact on Hockney's professional and private life. He had fantasized about the place well before moving there, and had already produced Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963), a painting depicting two men in a shower, derived from magazine photos. Indeed, one might say that his move to LA was the realization of his fantasy of a sensual and uninhibited paradise of swimming pools, perpetual sunshine and blonde young men.

It is also fair to say that his bright Californian imagery also appeals to our own escapist tendencies, and may be an important factor in his appeal as an artist. Would we feel the same about him if he had escaped to Bratislava, or Pittsburgh? I wonder. Growing Fame In 1964 Hockney spent time teaching at the University of Iowa and, during the following two years, taught at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in Los Angeles and at Berkeley. Recognition within the arts profession continued to come his way. In 1964, he staged his first American solo show at the Alan Gallery in New York, where he received rave notices and sold every painting. In 1966, he enjoyed no fewer than five solo shows in Europe. In the same year, he met a nineteen-year-old American student called Peter Schlesinger, with whom he had his first real love affair. In 1967, the pair returned to Europe and toured the continent - the same year that Hockney completed his famous painting A Bigger Splash, and when his painting Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool, won the John Moores painting prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

It was also during this period that Hockney began making stage designs for theatres on both sides of the Atlantic. Theatre Designwork It was during the 1960s that he began his lifelong interest in set-design for the theatre, opera and ballet. His first commission involved Jarry's Ubu Roi at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1966. This was followed by designs for Igor Stravinsky's Rake's Progress (Glyndebourne Festival 1974), and for Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (Glyndebourne Festival 1978), as well as a commission for costumes and sets for a triple performance of works by Satie, Poulenc and Ravel at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Later he created sets for a work by Stravinsky at the Metropolitan Opera, Puccini's Turandot in San Francisco, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Los Angeles, and Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. In 1968 Hockney returned to London with Schlesinger, who began studying at the Slade School of Fine Art.

He also painted his first large double-portraits, such as those of Fred and Marcia Weisman, and Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. The year ended with a solo show in New York at the André Emmerich Gallery. The following year Hockney accepted an offer to become a guest professor at the Kunsthochschule in Hamburg in 1969, but at home his relationship with Schlesinger was beginning to deteriorate - a process captured on film in a frank documentary on Hockney's life being made at the time by Jack Hazan. 1970s Meantime in 1970, Hockney's first major retrospective exhibition was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and the artist continued to be feted as a major figure in the English art world. The retrospective subsequently toured to Hanover, Rotterdam and Belgrade. In 1971 Hockney completed his most famous piece of portrait art - Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (later voted the most popular modern painting in the Tate Gallery).

By this time Hockney's worries about appearing modern had receded and he began to have more confidence in allowing his naturalistic portrayal of the world to speak for itself. But some of his pictures from the early 70s continued to suffer from a rather lifeless appearance due to their over-reliance on photographic sources. (Similar criticism has been made of the Scottish contemporary genre-painter Jack Vettriano .) Fortunately, he continued to excel in drawings from life, as exemplified in such pen-and-ink portraits as Nick and Henry on Board, Nice to Calvi (1972). In 1973, Hockney went to work in Paris for a short time, where he collaborated with Aldo and Piero Crommelynck, the former master printers of Picasso, to produce a set of etchings in memory of the great Spanish genius who had died earlier that year. In 1974, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris held a major exhibition of Hockney's works. It was also the year which saw the completion of Jack Hazan's biographical film on Hockney's life, entitled A Bigger Splash.

Although initially shocked by the film's candour about his gay status as well as his relationship with the much younger Schlesinger, Hockney eventually approved its release. During the mid-1970s Hockney abandoned fine art painting for a while in order to concentrate on drawing and etching, as well as new commissions for stage and theatre designs. His continuing curiosity with differing art forms led him to produce considerable bodies of work in different media, such as the Paper Pools and other pulped paper works of 1978, as well as a number of trial experiments with polaroid and 35 mm photography, in which produced hundreds of composite pictures (joiners) in an attempt to apply the multi-angle analytical Cubist technique to a mechanical medium. In 1978 he took up permanent residence in the Hollywood Hills overlooking Los Angeles. 1980s During the 1980s Hockney turned to photo collage , employing a Polaroid camera. He drove across the southwest United States taking thousands of photos which he then assembled into panoramic montages, such as You make the picture, Zion Canyon, Utah.

(Subsequently, these photo-montages were the subject of a retrospective of the artist's photography at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.) These works were part of a continuing fascination with technical gadgetry that culminated in the production of home made prints on photocopiers, as well as images conveyed by fax machine or devised on a computer. He also replicated some of the perspective theories of these collages in paintings like A Visit with Christopher and Don, Santa Monica Canyon (1984), comprising two canvases measuring approx 2 X 6 metres. In 1981, as a diversion from this camerawork, Hockney participated in the figurative art exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, submitting four new paintings. And in 1983, he began a series of self-portraits , enabling the viewer to see the man behind the brush, and exposing his vulnerability in the process. More exhibitions and commissions followed. In 1985 he was commissioned to design the cover and a series of inside-pages for the French edition of Vogue magazine. Another significant commission involved the Quantel Paintbox, a computer software program that permitted the artist to draw directly onto the computer screen.

His resulting work featured in a BBC series on the program. In 1988 a major retrospective of Hockney's work was staged in Los Angeles, which later toured New York and London. 1990s In the 1990s, Hockney continued to play around with new technology. He employed a colour laser copier to create images in some of his works and replicated some of his paintings. Above all, he was impressed with the vibrancy of colour produced by these devices. This constant desire to experiment was also exemplified in the set of Very New Paintings begun in 1992. These were semi-abstract landscape views of the Pacific coast and the Santa Monica mountains, depicted in a succession of plunging perspectives, dazzling vistas, brilliant light and colour, after the style of Picasso and Matisse . In 1995 a retrospective of his drawings opened at the prestigious Royal Academy in London.

This was followed in 1998 by a retrospective at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and a similar show at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, and at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, and the Kunsthalle Krems in Lower Austria. The decade ended with a solo exhibition of his painting at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris. 2000s Now in his 60s, Hockney still retained a keen interest in the history of art . In the 2001 television program Secret Knowledge, he asserted that the famous Old Masters of the Renaissance and Baroque used camera obscura techniques to project an image of the subject onto the surface of the painting, reserving for the painter the simple task of filling in the outline with colour.

According to Hockney, this technique explained how these artists were able to achieve the photographic quality of their portraits, although his view has been strongly opposed by the Art Renewal Centre who have published counter arguments in several articles, including experiences of living artists who have no use for such devices yet still produce paintings of photo-realistic quality. In 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London staged a major display of Hockney's portrait art, including self-portraits, comprising over 150 of his paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks and photo-collages completed over the previous 40 years. (See also: National Gallery London ). In 2007, Bigger Trees Near Warter - a monumental-scale view of a coppice in Yorkshire, and Hockney's largest ever picture, measuring a massive 15 feet by 40-feet - appeared in the Royal Academy's annual Summer Exhibition. Painted en plein air on 50 individual canvases, over a period of 5 weeks, the work was donated by the artist to the Tate Gallery the following year.

In 2008, Hockney enjoyed solo shows at The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, and Leslie Sacks Fine Art, Los Angeles. His works now hang in the best art museums around the world. Awards and Records Hockney was made a Companion of Honour (CH) in 1997 and is also an Academician (RA) of the London Royal Academy of Arts. In 2004, his work A Bigger Grand Canyon - a series of 60 paintings forming one huge composition - was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million. In June 2006, his painting A Bigger Splash was sold for £2.6m - a record for a Hockney painting.

Summary Seen as one of the great 20th century painters , Hockney's reputation as an artist rests principally on the quality and precision of his draughtsmanship, as in his portraiture; as well as the quality and diversity of his etchings, as in his set of 16 etchings comprising a modern autobiographical version of William Hogarth's Rakes Progress, as well as his lithographic works and his Illustrations for Fourteen Poems for C. P. Cavafy, for Grimm's Six Fairy Tales and The Blue Guitar. However, these exemplary artworks fail to capture the extraordinary individuality, energetic innovation and sheer talent of the boy from Yorkshire, whose dream was to become an artist. For another painter from Northern England with a quite different style, see: L.S. Lowry (1887-1976), noted for his cityscapes populated by his signature "matchstick men".  For information about contemporary artists, see: Homepage .

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VISUAL ARTISTS A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance - Exhibition at Tate Modern | Tate Past Event Tate Modern Exhibition A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance 14 November 2012 – 1 April 2013 Pinot Gallizio Documentation, Industrial Painting c1958 Helena Almeida Inhabited Painting 1975 Jack Hazan A Bigger Splash 1974 Courtesy Jack Hazan and David Mingay, distributed by the British Film Institute © Buzzy Enterprises Ltd. Niki de Saint Phalle Shooting Picture 1961 Jack Smith Unknown Title 1961–62 © Jack Smith Archive CORE A Bigger Splash Marc Camille Chaimowicz Jean Cocteau… 2003–8 Courtesy the artist and Cabinet, London Ana Mendieta Tate © The estate of Ana Mendieta, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York This exhibition will take a new look at the dynamic relationship between performance and painting since 1950.

Contrasting key paintings by Jackson Pollock and David Hockney , the exhibition considers two different approaches to the idea of the canvas as an arena in which to act: one gestural, the other one theatrical. The paintings of the Vienna Actionists or the Shooting Pictures of Niki de St Phalle will be re-presented within the performance context that they were made, and juxtaposed with works by artists such as Cindy Sherman or Jack Smith that used the face and body as a surface, often using make-up in work dealing with gender role-play. The exhibition proposes a new way of looking at the work of a number of younger artists whose approach to painting is energised by these diverse historical sources, drawing upon action painting, drag and the idea of the stage set. Let us know what you think, tweet #BiggerSplash or comment on the Bigger Splash blog . Tate Shots: Lucy McKenzie in A Bigger Splash TateShots: Lucy McKenzie in A Bigger Splash TateShots: Yves Klein – Anthropometries TateShots: Yves Klein - Anthropometries Some films in this exhibition include scenes of an adult nature.

For further information please contact the gallery by emailing visiting.modern@tate.org.uk or calling 0207 887 8888 Venue David Hockney, Art History & Styles of Art - Art.com Wiki 6 Some Examples of David Hockney Artwork Personal life Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, David Hockney was the fourth of five children. His parents nurtured their son’s interests in artistic pursuits. By 1953, Hockney was attending the Bradford School of Art, where he proved to be a versatile student. It was at the Bradford School of Art that he learned how to express himself through the medium of oil painting . Since Hockney was a conscientious objector, he worked as a hospital orderly for several years as part of his National Service. Afterwards, he attended the Royal Academy, where he had the chance to work with artists such as Francis Bacon . Hockney was a talented student, earning many accolades from critics and instructors. Career Hockney has always been an avid reader. As he matured as an artist, he increasingly drew on personal subject matter. His early work explored a variety of themes.

The painting We Two Boys Together Clinging, completed in 1961, incorporates text from poet Walt Whitman’s works. Hockney had not openly acknowledged his sexuality until he started creating works of art that dealt with homosexual themes. By 1961, Hockney was able to sell some of his artwork to earn the funds for a trip to New York City. There, he met luminaries such as Andy Warhol . Hockney felt especially fascinated by California, and he soon made his way to the sunny and glamorous state, where he entered a new phase of his life as an artist. Paintings such as Man in Shower in Beverly Hills use a cool, bright palette to represent the Californian landscape. Hockney was also developing a more realistic style of painting. Completed in 1967, A Bigger Splash is a canvas that captures the clean lines and luxurious feel of wealthy California. In 1971, Hockney completed one of his most famous naturalistic paintings. Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy embodies the fresh colors and realistic style that Hockney brought to contemporary subjects. Hockney’s creativity could not be harnessed by oil paint alone.

In the 1980s, he began focusing more intensely on “joiners,” a type of collage. These patchwork arrangements of photographs create fragmented portraits . He would work extensively with these vivid collages over the years, completing works such as Nicholas Wilder Studying Picasso . He also turned to self-portraiture, in keeping with his frequent focus on the personal. Over the decades, Hockney has been a vital and energetic force in the art world. The versatile artist has also designed sets and worked with printmaking. In 2001, David Hockney shocked the art world by theorizing that classical artists used mirrors and prisms to construct complex scenes in their paintings. According to Hockney, in 1999 he started to notice a particular line that was present in older artworks as much as modern art. He reasoned that Renaissance artists utilized mirrors to sketch outlines of buildings and then plopped in additional details. To art historians, this implied that the painters “cheated” and the hypothesis met with much skepticism. From mid-2004 to the end of that year, Hockney painted more than 100 watercolor studies and this marked his supposed return to art creation.

Fun Facts In 2011, The Other Art Fair conducted a poll to determine the most influential British artist of all time. Hockney won, beating out many significant artists. At the Royal College, Hockney failed his art history courses. However, his strength as an artist earned him his diploma. Hockney was the subject of an intimate biographical film by Jack Hazan, released in 1974. Related Artists

Question: Which English artist was the subject of the 1974 film A Bigger Splash?
Answer: David Hockney