David Hockney Lithograph of Water Made of Lines For Sale

David Hockney’s Lithograph of Water Made of Lines is a set of eleven lithographs, a series comprising the same scene, which features a regular shaped landscape, swimming pool and diving board. It is important to remember the context of this series, created at a time when Hockney had moved to Los Angeles full time, enchanted with the vibrant landscapes, liberation, and sharp light of his ‘dreamland’ California. Of course, Hockney, over the decades of his broad creative oeuvre as one of the greatest artists of the 20^th and 21^st century, has become synonymous with the swimming pool: and the Lithographic Water Made of Lines series was one of the earliest records of his use of the turquoise waters as his central motif. Infact, one could say the diving boards represent metaphorical springboards into one of Hockney’s lifetime preoccupations, ‘the challenge of representing water.’

Hockney once said about the California swimming pool as his inspiration,  ‘As we flew in over Los Angeles (in 1963), I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realised that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate.’ 

Lithograph of Water Made of Lines was created in 1978-1980, post Hockney’s groundbreaking Moving Focus series and The Weather Series, (see Andipa viewing rooms) both in which he had worked with master printer, Kenneth Tyler, to dramatically evolve his print techniques and visual language. Tyler had also forged new artistic styles for pop art luminaries Roy Lichtenstein (see Andipa viewing rooms) and it was Tyler who encouraged Hockney to paint on handmade paper,  which Hockney continued to utilise in this series which fuses lithograph and print. Lithograph of Water Made of Lines continues to push forward the boundaries of space, perspective and form within the composition. By using a single aluminium plate, Hockney can rework the same scene but create variety in tone, depth and shadow to produce the transparent effects of water.

The eleven prints depict a similar scene yet play with perception and tone through the exchange of ink and crayon: for instance, see the rich textural effect of the ink based, Lithograph of Water Made of Thick and Thin Lines, A Green Wash, A Light Blue Wash, And a Dark Blue Wash as opposed to the crayon based Lithograph of Water Made of Lines and Crayon (Pool II-B).

In this Lithograph of Water Made of Lines series, water actually becomes like its own character driving a narrative sans human presence: ‘…you look at the surface, you look below it, you look through it, everyday it looks different.’ (Hockney) The artist represents the fluidity of water and it’s ability to evoke different emotional responses, particularly seen in Lithograph of Water Made of Lines, a Green Wash, and a Light Blue Wash, Lithograph of Water Made of Lines with Two Light Blue Washes, and Lithograph of Water Made of Thick and Thin Lines and Two Light Blue Washes, all utilising light blue and green washes to altering visual effects.

The compositions (see Lithograph of Water Made of Lines) almost appear like technical drawings with the grid tiles reminiscent of graph paper: a white diving board stretches over the water from the left side creating a sylph like presence beneath the water which could be both human shadow or the trickery of natural light. 

In the series, such as Lithograph of Water Made of Thick and Thin Lines, A Green Wash, A Light Blue Wash, And a Dark Blue Wash, Hockney plays with perception; he uses tiny, squiggly lines to give the water a sense of movement and energy, it is presented as dynamic but transient in contrast to the graphic tiles and diving board. Hockney seems to purposefully present an unfinished, spontaneous depiction of the pool – the pool tiles in the surface are still visible as the water isn’t a solid mass - in contrast to the tidy perfection of the backyard swimming pool and gardens found at Los Angeles addresses, a visual emblem of the utopian Californian city. (see his later A Bigger Splash)

As the Lithograph Water Made of Lines title suggests, Hockney uses the series as a study of water more than the actual pool scene; ‘Water, the idea of drawing water, is always appealing to me. If it’s clear water anyway, transparent water. You can look on it, through it, into it, see it as volume, see it as surface…’