David Hockney Tate Britain ‘A Bigger Splash’ and ‘Peter Climbing Out of Nick’s Pool’
Brief Transient Hedonism
David Hockney Tate Britain ‘A Bigger Splash’
and ‘Peter Climbing Out of Nick’s Pool’
When you gaze upon the nubile form of the figure rising from the pool, what you see? What do you feel? What values, attitudes and beliefs of yours rise to the surface with the figure? Transient hedonism all too brief.
The 1960s and 70s Los Angeles Gay Californian Lifestyle.
Carefree? Socially acceptable? Pre-AIDS. Rejection of social norms? Affluence – the swimming pool, warm and sunny – the blue sky and palm trees. Hedonism. A transient life of our understanding, experience, desire or rejection?
Transience and Loss
The transience and eventual loss of life and all worldly goods (water does not record our existence, our presence, the splash we make quickly disappears as though you were never there).
The movements we make, the climbing out of the pool, the sunbathing even, all lost in the ether of the chronology of time. Lost, originally in Old English ’lorn’ from forlorn, bereavement and death. Brief transient hedonism.
Canvas captured
Merely recorded on canvas, framed and white outline bordered as though so a snapshot in time, the next frame – we’ll be gone. Brief transient hedonism.
Warmth, colour, gaiety, physical and mental pleasures – make the most of them whilst you can. Perhaps look at length into ‘A Bigger Splash’ for a deeper meaning touching us all. Brief transient hedonism.