A Bigger Splash (1974)

David Hockney. His colorful, geometric paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools established him as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. With that burst of white-blonde hair and thick black-rimmed glasses that resemble goggles, he's an instantly-recognizable icon. And seemingly anticipating reality television by several decades, for three and a half years (1970-3), Hockney allowed filmmakers Jack Hazan and David Mingay to follow him around, filming his interactions with friends, lovers and business associates—documenting his life and the creation of some of the world's most famous paintings. The resulting film, A Bigger Splash, eventually evolved into an amorphous melding of both fact and fiction, a quasi-documentary that shocked Hockney. Apparently, Hockney had expected the film to be "just a lot of paintings revolving to bits of Bach."

The film, even with its fictional elements, is much more personal than the simple "artist at work" documentary Hockney seemed to have expected. Taking place during the period when Hockney was breaking up with Peter Schlesinger, the beautiful, androgynous young man who served as both his love and muse, a major strand of the film's narrative revolves around Hockney's attempt to finish his last painting of Schlesinger (after destroying and repainting it several times, it eventually became Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)). But except for an extended dream sequence, it's impossible to discern what is actual reality and what is being fabricated for the camera. Not that it matters much. However accurate (or not) the film may be in depicting Hockney's daily life, it's undeniably a powerful time capsule—a vivid, intense depiction of the swinging London of the 1960s during its last dying gasps. In a lot of ways, A Bigger Splash plays like Blowup with a lot of gay sex.

I reviewed Peter Watkins's exemplary biopic Edvard Munch several months ago, and what I now find surprising is that even if A Bigger Splash didn't consciously influence Watkins's film, both director's technique for getting at the essence of their respective subjects are startlingly similar: both assemble seemingly superfluous, offhand moments to construct multilayered and endlessly faceted portrait of painters and their art (it rather anticipates Hockney's later photo collage work). But the focus is not on the artist in the way a traditional documentary would be, rather, the focus is on the rhythms of the artist's everyday life, and how his art organically grows out of it. Moments of inspiration and brilliance are present and accounted for, but so are the long stretches of everyday living that happens during the "down time." The inevitable problem that arises is that while this banality might be true to life, it doesn't always make for compelling cinema.

The cover makes it obvious that the targeted audience for A Bigger Splash is the gay community, as an (artfully obscured) nude photograph of Schlesinger dominates the front cover (interestingly, Hockney is limited to several postage stamp-size photos on the back). This manages to be give both an accurate and misleading impression of the film: accurate because it's abundant full frontal male nudity and frank depictions of homosexual sex inevitably limits its appeal to a straight—particularly straight male—audience. At the same time, it's unfortunate that A Bigger Splash has to be confined to such rigid pigeon-holing—it's an intriguing take on the creation of art and the artistic temperament. I'd wager that anyone who finds interest and value in a Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol film like Flesh will find A Bigger Splash of much interest.

Hockneys werk aan het schilderij was onderwerp van het docudrama A Bigger Splash uit 1973