The Non-presence of People in David Hockney's Paintings of ...

REVITAL SILVERMAN
Fig. 1: David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967. Acrylic on canvas, 244x244,
Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, London.
The housepipe in A Lawn Sprinkler and the stepping stone in A Bigger Splash,
introduces the spectator into the depth of the picture. Any feeling of depth
disappears because the lawn in the front and back plane is treated with the
same intensity. There is no blurring of color in the distance; no depth in the
depiction of water. The water and the splash belong to the same reality but are
depicted as different ones; no shadow exists, except that of the chair in A Bigger
Splash. The painted frame, in both pictures, creates the awareness to the twodimensionality
of the canvas.
These paintings are among the last in which Hockney used a frame around
the image - whether painted or left as bare margins of canvas - which is the
space between the inner and external frame. Hockney explains the white stripe:
104