David Hockney

This lithograph is one piece from a series of eleven, each portraying the same swimming pool scene with a diving board, a subject matter which has become synonymous with the artist. Hockney creatively employs the lithograph technique to explore a range of styles within the series, varying from minimalist and crayon-like to vibrant and detailed. This particular print leans towards minimalism, reminiscent of a blueprint with its absence of colour washes seen in other prints. Instead, Hockney has rendered the pool using a blue grid-like pattern. While the illusion of depth is less pronounced in this print compared to others in the portfolio, Hockney still includes a series of wiggling blue lines to depict light refraction on the water. These spontaneous lines introduce a dynamic quality to the print, preventing it from appearing static. Hockney acknowledged the challenge of representing water, noting, “It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water. It can be any colour, it’s movable, and it has no set visual description… It is an interesting probe to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything.”