Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool

Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool is a 1966 acrylic-on-canvas painting by the British pop art artist David Hockney. It depicts the rear view of a naked man climbing out of a swimming pool outside a contemporary house. It is held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool, 1966, David Hockney

Background

Hockney moved from England to California in 1964, drawn by its sleek modernist aesthetic and warm Mediterranean climate.[1] In 1966, while teaching at UCLA, Hockney met the American art student Peter Schlesinger. The two became lovers, and Hockney started painting a series of pool pictures, often featuring Schlesinger. A few of these, such as Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool (1966), A Bigger Splash (1967) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), later achieved iconic status. On 15 November 2018, the latter set a world record for the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction by a living artist.[2]

Description

The painting measures 152 cm × 152 cm (60 in × 60 in). It depicts the communal pool of the apartment block at 1145 Larrabee Street, Hollywood, north of Sunset Boulevard, which was then the home of art dealer Nicholas Wilder, and shows a naked Schlesinger, then 18 years old, climbing up and out of the pool. Hockney, in his characteristic style, simplifies and flattens the image, and the rippling surface of the water is abstracted into wavy white lines on blue, similar to a comic or an advertisement. The straight lines in the painting were created using masking tape. The work has a border of un-primed canvas, like a photograph, which Hockney says he left "to make the picture look more like a painting".

The figure in the painting is based on a polaroid photograph Hockney took of Schlesinger standing up against the hood of his own MG car. Interviewed about the painting in 2012, Schlesinger laughed about it, saying "That’s why the part under the water isn't painted well—because it was just invented."[3] In 1967, Hockney's painting won the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The painting was acquired as a bequest from Sir John Moores who in 1957, established the eponymous biannual award and subsequently often purchased the winning entry and then presented the work to the museum. Moores purchased this work in 1967, and presented it to the museum in 1968. The picture remains in the Walker's permanent collection.[4]

References
  1. "The pull of Hockney's pool paintings - Apollo Magazine". .apollo-magazine.com. 4 February 2017. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  2. Taylor, Chloe (16 November 2018). "David Hockney painting sells for a record $90 million". cnbc.com. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  3. Wilkinson, Isabel (27 January 2012). "Peter Schlesinger, David Hockney's Muse, Shows New Works in L.A." thedailybeast.com. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  4. "'Peter Getting out of Nick's Pool', David Hockney - Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool museums". www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 22 November 2018.

Sources
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