Richard Hertz writes that paintings like this reflect "the aspirations of ordinary people" and that is consistent with the demands for "rapid change on the part of the population at large, in the interest of what is ludicrously referred to as economic growth or well-being." What Hertz seems to be saying is art with popular imagery as a focus deals with things "everybody thinks about." Which is not to say "everybody" thinks about cool sprinklers and thick green lawns; but everybody does dream of owning property and many also dream of that property being in lotus land - Southern California. Another Hockney painting is a very recent and huge venture called "Bigger Trees Near Water." In this work, Hockney has given his audience the biggest painting he has ever done in his entire career. The painting went on display at London's Royal Academy of Art in 2007. At its unveiling, Hockney said he did the painting 10 pieces at a time; it measures 12 meters (40 feet) by 4.5 meters, and features the landscape - a stark series of winter trees with no leaves - of the land near his childhood home in England's East Yorkshire. Blogger Stephen Art-East viewed the work and said: "I find the way the trees reach upwards joyous and celebratory." It is a sensational work, and even though Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe says that "modernist works...typically contradict the everyday world" (Gilbert-Rolfe, 129), there is no contradiction in the wonderful intertwining of the trees in "Bigger Trees Near Water."

Hockney himself has asked, "What can't photography do?" The answer is obvious: The camera can't create gorgeous paintings like "Bigger Trees Near Water."

Works Cited

Bibliography

Clothier, Peter, Hockney (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995), 34-35.

Gayford, Martin, "David Hockney: Why I Paint Instead of Just Picking Up a Camera."

Bloomberg.com (September, 2004). Available at http://www.bloomberg.com.

Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. "Popular Imagery" in Theories of Contemporary...

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Harper Stone. "Spacial Contradictions and Other Means to Revolution." Available at http://harperstone.org/writing/spacepaper.pdf.

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Claes Oldenburg, I Am for an Art (1961), quoted in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 335.

Peter Clothier, Hockney (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995), 34.

Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 376.

Nicolas Pioch, "Hockney, David: A Bigger Splash," WebMuseum, Paris, available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hockney/splash/.

Harper Stone, "Spacial Contradictions and Other Means to Revolution," available at http://harperstone.org/writing/spacepaper.pdf.

Richard Hertz, Theories of Contemporary Art (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 128.

Stephen Art-East, "Baby 'bigger Trees Near Water.'" Available at http://stephenart-east.blogspot.com.

Martin Gayford, "David Hockney: Why I Paint Instead of Just Picking Up a Camera," Bloomberg.com, 2004, available at http://www.bloomberg.com.