in Art, History | June 15th, 2026 Leave a Comment

In a way, it always made sense that one of the most mem­o­rable visu­al dis­til­la­tions of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia life would have been paint­ed by an Eng­lish­man. The purest appre­ci­a­tion for the wide-open lifestyle choic­es, freestyle built envi­ron­ment, unre­pen­tant pri­vate wealth, and high-wattage sun­shine of Los Ange­les — espe­cial­ly as it was exag­ger­at­ed, and indeed mythol­o­gized, in mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry pop­u­lar cul­ture — could only be felt by some­one from an infi­nite­ly more tra­di­tion­al, strait­ened, and damp part of the world. David Hock­ney, who died last week, was­n’t just an Eng­lish­man but a north­ern Eng­lish­man, who would have grown up sur­round­ed by the kind of atti­tudes sat­i­rized in the “Four York­shire­men” sketch made famous by Mon­ty Python. Lit­tle won­der he fell in love with the newest city of the New World.

Hock­ney gave that many artis­tic forms over decades of his long life and career. Prac­ti­cal­ly any­one who knows his name can rec­og­nize A Big­ger Splash, from 1967, a both idyl­lic and faint­ly eerie depic­tion of some­one hav­ing just plunged into the swim­ming pool behind what now looks like a clas­sic “mid­cen­tu­ry mod­ern” home accent­ed with palm trees.