{"id":862820,"date":"2026-06-12T19:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862820\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T19:00:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T19:00:23","slug":"essential-david-hockney-art-of-los-angeles-pools-lawn-and-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862820\/","title":{"rendered":"Essential David Hockney art of Los Angeles pools, lawn and wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n

David Hockney, the towering English artist who made Los Angeles his home, created many pieces that epitomized the city\u2019s sun-drenched landscapes filled with glittering pools, rolling hills and lush foliage. Here are five of his best.<\/p>\n

\""Mulholland <\/p>\n

\u201cMulholland Drive: The Road To The Studio,\u201d 1980. At more than 7 feet tall and 20 feet wide, this is the artist\u2019s largest canvas.<\/p>\n

(LACMA)<\/p>\n

\u201cMulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio,\u201d 1980 <\/p>\n

Hockney\u2019s largest canvas \u2014 at more than 7 feet tall and 20 feet wide \u2014 is filled with deft lines and Hockney\u2019s signature swirls. It depicts the artist\u2019s daily commute from his home in the Hollywood Hills to his studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. The iconic winding road from the painting\u2019s title twists and sweeps through hills of blue, purple and pink. A swimming pool and tennis courts can be seen in the background and the landscape is dotted with power lines and trees. Cross-hatched grids in the background represent the vastness of the surrounding areas, including Burbank and Studio City. That the canvas is a representation of driving \u2014 one of the city\u2019s core activities \u2014 makes it especially resonant with Angelenos who recognize that time spent in the car, while often frustrating, can also be a thing of transcendent beauty on the right road. Hockney loved to take visitors on what he called a \u201cWagner Drive,\u201d<\/a> winding through hills listening to opera. The work is part of the permanent collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a> and is currently on view.<\/p>\n

\""A <\/p>\n

\u201cA Bigger Splash,\u201d 1967. This painting was made during a period of time that Hockney remembers as one of his happiest in L.A.<\/p>\n

(J. Paul Getty Trust)<\/p>\n

\u201cA Bigger Splash,\u201d 1967 <\/p>\n

This is one of Hockney\u2019s most iconic paintings \u2014 a large-scale image of a luminous blue swimming pool marked by a diver\u2019s splash. A sleek modernist home with a single white director\u2019s chair sits in the background with two slender palm trees rising into the light blue sky behind. A diving board juts into the frame to dominate the right corner. A frothy white water splash suggests the presence \u2014 and momentary absence \u2014 of the swimmer now submerged in cool water. Hockney made \u201cA Bigger Splash\u201d while living with his partner and muse, the artist Peter Schlesinger, on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. The couple spent time with writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, the painter Don Bachardy. Hockney would remember this period as one of his most prolific and happiest times in California.<\/p>\n

\"People <\/p>\n

Visitors view \u2018\u201cAmerican Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman),\u201d 1968, during a press preview for a Hockney retrospective at Tate Modern.<\/p>\n

(Jack Taylor \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman),\u201d 1968 <\/p>\n

Hockney\u2019s double portraits are among his most celebrated achievements. He painted this one of the heiress to Hunt Wesson Foods and her husband, a zealous art fan, shortly after creating another well-known double portrait of Isherwood and Bachardy. By the 1950s the Weismans had one of the country\u2019s most ambitious collections of contemporary art. Hockney captures the luminescence of the California sunshine as the couple poses in the sculpture garden of their L.A. home. A turquoise William Turnbull sculpture is between them, and another sculpture by Henry Moore is in the background, a seeming replication of Marcia\u2019s stiff stance in her bright pink, floor-length dress. A single totem pole appears in the far right of the tight frame, as stiff and formal as Fred. The reserved couple does not look at each other, even as we gaze closely at them.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

\u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),\u201d 1972. This is a depiction of Hockney and his partner Peter Schlesinger.<\/p>\n

(Timothy A. Clary \/ AFP \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),\u201d 1972 <\/p>\n

This tense large-scale canvas measuring 7 by 10 feet combines Hockney\u2019s double portraits with one of his signature swimming pools. It also contains the seeds of gay love that defined Hockney\u2019s work. His fantasy of California as a place much more accepting of homosexuality than England originally inspired Hockney to visit L.A. for the first time in 1964. In this painting, a man meant to be Hockney swims underwater to the edge of the pool, his dark hair swaying in the water, his tight white swimsuit blending in with the sun-dappled water. A man representing Schlesinger, dressed in white slacks, polished loafers and a dark pinkish-red blazer stands at the edge of the pool, near its shadowy edges, staring down at the swimmer. Deep green hills covered in dense trees rise in the background, receding into the far distance \u2014 representing the many ways that wild land seems to thrive in this vast urban space. In 2018 this painting sold for $90.3 million, which was, at the time, the highest price paid<\/a> at auction for a work by a living artist.<\/p>\n

\""Beverly <\/p>\n

\u201cBeverly Hills Housewife,\u201d 1966-67, represents Hockney\u2019s fascination with the affluent lifestyles of L.A.\u2019s leisure class.<\/p>\n

(Christie\u2019s Images Ltd.)<\/p>\n

\u201cBeverly Hills Housewife,\u201d 1966-67 <\/p>\n

This massive portrait of philanthropist Betty Freeman was painted four years after Hockney left the Royal College of Art in London and is part of his acclaimed \u201cCalifornia Dreaming\u201d series. Instead of a pool, this canvas features another of Hockney\u2019s signature fascinations: a manicured, bright green lawn. The grass frames the foreground, and Freeman is depicted in a fuchsia dress inside a linear, glass-fronted modernist home. A zebra-striped lounging chair to the left and a taxidermied antelope head on the wall behind hint at the wealth and leisure of its titular city \u2014 another subject of great interest to Hockney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> David Hockney, the towering English artist who made Los Angeles his home, created many pieces that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":862821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1037,9240,1582,276,2451,351842,11092,351844,351845,17360,351840,2961,351843,224,351841,5337,1069,6620,8066],"class_list":["post-862820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-art","tag-background","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-city","tag-double-portrait","tag-edge","tag-english-artist","tag-essential-david-hockney-art","tag-hill","tag-hockney","tag-la","tag-large-canvas","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-pool","tag-losangeles","tag-painting","tag-time","tag-work"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116738683753639327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}