A new exhibition at the Design Museum celebrates swimming, so we re-visit Andipa’s exhibition almost two decades ago which featured 12 of Hockney’s swimming pool works.
Currently open at The Design Museum until August, Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style dives into the world of swimming: from the pool to the lido to nature. Spanning the past century, the exhibition explores our relationship to the water through a myriad of shifting contexts including social, cultural, technological and environmental.
From Britain’s lido boom during the early 20th century to a detailed architectural model of the 2012 Aquatics Centre designed by Zaha Hadid, the exhibition comprises 200 objects from around 50 lenders across Europe which tell the story of swimming from sartorial choices to sports performance, architecture and design.
Three in-depth sections – the pool, the lido and nature – explores design’s role in shaping our relationship with swimming, beginning in the 1920s when swimwear began to be marketed for swimming, moving away from the Victorian’s preference for bathing as beach holidays boomed with popularity. It also looks at the role of swimwear and the evolving ideas of body agency and autonomy.
The architecture of swimming is explored: highlighting the Jubilee Pool, which opened 90 years ago in 1935 in Penzance in Cornwall, recognised for its interesting triangle shape. A film captures the story of how the pool has been regenerated by its local community – proving the power of the people in communities and neighbours to safeguard these special public swimming spaces from decade to decade, moving them from generation to generation. Interesting examples of saunas, public baths and beach huts are also on show, as well as the role of nature and folklore to tell the story of swimming, explored through water spirits and nymphs across centuries.
One of the oldest objects in the exhibition is the Olympic gold medal received by swimmer Lucy Morton who took the 200m breaststroke title in the 1924 Paris games, becoming the first British woman to win a solo Olympic title in swimming. The story of swimwear for sporting performance is explored throughout, where the advances in textile technology are examined through a number of items displayed. Innovations such as a 1930s woollen swimsuit that was designed to improve speed, as well as a 1960s swimsuit designed with Olympic champion swimmer Judy Grinham – the second woman to win solo gold for Britain in the pool in the Olympics.
The Design Museum’s new exhibition brings to mind Andipa’s 2006 show David Hockney – Graphics and Drawings which featured around 50 drawings, lithographs and limited edition signed prints by David Hockney, including 12 of Hockney’s swimming pool works. Using swimming pools as the subject for many of his paintings, Hockney explored the effects of light on water as well as the contrast between shadows cast by diving boards, and the fluidity of rippling water. The highlight of the show was a very rare preparatory drawing ‘Swimming Pool’, 1978, comprised of brown ink on paper which depicts a Californian swimming pool and diving board. The simple work wonderfully shows the play of the shadow on the water and with an instruction to blend the colour of the unseen background into the wavy lines of the pool’s water.
Famed for his swimming pool paintings inspired by his visits to the west coast of America in the early sixties, Hockney began experimenting with prints, having had some printing experience when at art school in England. A visit to meet Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland at Tyler Graphics’ paper pulp works in New York enthused Hockney to the point that he began his own paper pulp prints, returning to the subject of the pool and printing twenty-nine Paper Pools during a 49-day stretch, working as astonishing 16 hours a day. The diving board dramatically breaks the surface of the intensely blue water, which varies from turquoise to deep royal blue, sometimes just shown as a wash. The shadow of the board is sometimes geometrically cast against the side of the pool, however in Paper Pool, 1980, it drapes like a curtain, mimicking the wavy lines breaking the surface of the water.
The exhibition positioned Andipa as the first gallery to show all 12 of Hockney’s swimming pool works together, “which provided a wonderful insight into Hockney’s creative processes as the works progressed” said The Times in a review of the exhibition.
For further reading, please see the below information and articles:
https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/splash-a-century-of-swimming-and-style
https://andipaeditions.com/exhibitions/25-david-hockney-graphics-and-drawings-andipa-london/
If you would like to buy or sell a print by David Hockney please contact sales@andipa.com or +44 20 7581 1244
