David Hockney Afternoon Swimming (M.C.A.T 233) For Sale

Afternoon Swimming, 1979 is part of David Hockney’s large oeuvre, in which the artist used the swimming pool as a narrative framing device to explore his fascination with ‘creating’ water. It is important to remember the context of the time he was creating many of his now most famous works, A Bigger Splash, Pool with Two Figures et al: depressed by the greyness of post war Britain, Hockney journeyed to Los Angeles, where on flying over the city centre, he couldn’t believe the birds eye view of swimming pools in each garden, so far removed from the public lido he had to travel to miles from his Yorkshire hometown. Swimming pools came to represent to the artist, his ‘utopian’ vision of California as a ‘dreamland’ of hope and opportunity.

Afternoon Swimming is a signed, dated lithograph, part of the grand Swimming Pool series, yet unlike the aforementioned prints, Afternoon Swimming departs from the flat surface style, instead enacting the motion of water through human ‘figures’ swimming lengths. Afternoon Swimming is a joyful image that depicts the water surface in bold blue ‘brushstrokes’ punctuated by a series of pink graphic lines, which depict either a party of swimmers or just one in constant movement. The exuberance of the swimmers doing lengths is juxtaposed by a big red lilo sitting on the pool surface, a motif of relaxation and Californian laissez-faire living. In the distance we can see the verdant green backyard garden with trees configured in graphic black outlines against the energetic splash of blue water.

 

Hockney labelled his move to California as like ‘Van Gogh going to Arles,’ and he pays homage to art movements through this Swimming Pool series. In Afternoon Swimming, we can see a fauvist reference to Matisse, in particular the freedom of painterly expression and bold choice of colours.

Afternoon Swimming is an image that translates well to the lithograph print medium: it also is an artwork that illustrates the multiple depictions of water Hockney conveyed, as he once said, ‘“It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything. It can be any colour, it’s movable, and it has no set visual description.”