David Hockney and swimming pools, a dive into the heart of a passion

On May 3rd, Bradford City secured promotion to League One (D3) thanks to a goal in the 90th minute on the final day of the Championship. An incredible achievement for the club, whose last spell in the Premier League dates back to 1999-2001.

It's unlikely, however, that the news would have affected David Hockney. The English painter was born in 1937 in this city of over 500,000 inhabitants, located in Yorkshire. He also grew up there until his departure for the legendary Royal College of Art in London. But David Hockney, now 87 years old, has always kept his distance from football. And even from sports in general.

However, what fascinated the artist from the very beginning of his career were swimming pools. Legend has it that upon his very first arrival in Los Angeles, in 1961, the young man was struck by the view of the city from the airplane window: the ground was littered with blue rectangles.

He painted his first pool painting, Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool , in 1964, when he moved to California, and the works followed one after another. There was Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool , which earned him his first major prize for contemporary painting, then the famous triptych The Little Splash , The Splash , A Bigger Splash (1966 and 1967).

Swimming pools fascinate David Hockney also because they epitomize his image of the United States: a country of leisure, pleasure, and freedom. A more open country, too, for someone who came out at 23, in a country—England—where homosexuality is illegal (the law would change in 1967).

"A Bigger Splash," 1967. Acrylic on canvas. (David Hockney)

"He will meet all his friends, artists, painters, by the pool. When he later goes to Fire Island (an island in the State of New York) , where the entire homosexual community of the United States meets, there too, we meet by the pools. The pool plays an important role in a way of life. But I don't have the impression that it is a place of sport for him, more a place of pleasure," confirms Catherine Cusset, author of the novel Life of David Hockney (Gallimard), republished this year in an illustrated version. And then, there are the aesthetic reasons: the artist is fascinated by blue, his favorite color.

Through water too, its depth, its reflections, its lights. He constantly wonders how to paint something transparent. "It was the problem of representing water that interested me (...). There is no particular way of painting it. It is always in motion and constantly changing color," he wrote in 1976 in the book David Hockney by David Hockney (Thames & Hudson). Around the pond, he also focuses on the modern architecture of Californian villas, their geometric shapes and their colors.

« "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" also proves his mastery of painting even as a very young artist. Because the water and the lights of the swimming pool are very difficult to paint.

Two of his pool paintings are on display at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris until August 31. There is A Bigger Splash , which features a large Californian house, a diving board, and a figure who has disappeared into the splash. "It's a snapshot that lasts forever ," says exhibition assistant Magdalena Gemra. "What's also special is that the painting is surrounded by blank canvas, as the artist worked from Polaroid photographs."

A little further on, you can also admire Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) , which David Hockney painted in 1972. There is still a swimming pool - but this time, it is a pool in the south of France - and two figures, one underwater, the other looking at it from the terrace.

"The figure in the red jacket is his companion at the time, Peter Schlesiger. They were separating. In this painting, Hockney shows the distance, the impossibility of being together between the figures ," continues Magdalena Gemra. "This work also demonstrates his mastery of painting even as a very young artist. Because the water and the lights in the pool are very difficult to paint."

At that time, David Hockney was only 35 years old and his popularity was already impressive. He signed with his first gallery owner immediately after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Then swimming pools would change everything for him: he had his first retrospective in 1974, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Finding success so early is a rarity. Among those who have achieved such trajectories are Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat . For David Hockney, the explosion of his aquatic fame is a mystery that sometimes borders on irritation.

"He learned that the man who had bought Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) in New York, posing as a private collector, had already resold it in Germany for three times the price. This painting, in which he had left his soul, had become the subject of speculation," writes Catherine Cusset in her book.

In 2018, this painting sold for more than $90 million at Christie's, a record for a living artist, surpassing Jeff Koons (the record has since been broken by the American visual artist). What does Hockney think of this amount? "He thinks that when we talk about numbers, we no longer see the paintings," replies Magdalena Gemra, who worked with him to develop the exhibition at the Fondation Louis-Vuitton.

David Hockney also made lithographs of swimming pools. He also designed, like twenty-eight other artists, a poster for the 1972 Munich Olympics. But the painter would like us to see more of his work. He has produced a huge number of portraits—from his parents to Harry Styles—has laid flowers on canvas, de-classified landscape painting, and more recently started drawing on an iPad. All this while constantly smoking cigarettes, which further distances him from the world of sport.

"Claude Monet lived to be 86 and smoked like a chimney!" David Hockney defended himself in 2020 on France Inter . On this subject, the Englishman is very committed. In his latest self-portrait, from early 2025, he wears a badge calling for "an end to authoritarianism," in reference to the ban on smoking in public spaces.

“Self Portrait Seated in a Green Chair, March 14, 2012 (1203).” Drawing on iPad. (David Hockney)

"He sees the fight against tobacco as that of a repressive society that has replaced cigarettes with antidepressants. The ban on smoking in public places, for him, is a sign of intolerance, the end of freedom and those who are against cigarettes are kind of moralistic old nurses," recalls Catherine Cusset, who did not dare complain about her cigarette smoke when she met him in 2022.

Perhaps this is why David Hockney preferred to stay away from the pool. To better depict the movements of the water and because smoking while swimming breaststroke remains complicated, even under the Californian sun.