David Hockney — A Bigger Splash

The swimming pool is still. Sky and building do not move. Only a white splash reveals that someone has just entered the water.

Hockney painted the briefest instant with extraordinary slowness. A splash that would vanish in seconds was constructed through prolonged, careful brushwork. The person is absent; only the trace remains.

The geometry of house and pool makes the bright Californian light unexpectedly cool. The setting is comfortable yet strangely empty because the subject of the event has disappeared beyond the image.

Byun Shi-Ji’s empty boats and unmarked roads likewise reveal a person through absence. Hockney uses a splash to speak of a body that has just vanished; Byun uses wind and vacancy to speak of someone who has not returned for a long time.

One is an absence of an instant. The other is absence transformed into waiting.

The splash has not yet subsided.