David Hockney
A Bigger Splash, 1967
Acrylic on canvas
support: 2425 x 2439 x 30 mm
Purchased 1981© David Hockney 2010
A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance “A Bigger Splash” will take a new look at the dynamic relationship between performance and painting from 1950 to the present day. Tate Modern, 14 November 2012 – 1 April 2013.]]>
Source: Tate Modern
Taking its title from David Hockney’s iconic 1967 image of a Californian swimming pool and Jack Hazan’s film about Hockney’s life, the exhibition will bring together a range of key works by over 40 artists including Yves Klein, Jackson Pollock and Cindy Sherman.
The show begins by exploring Hockney’s striking treatment of the splash in his major work A Bigger Splash 1967 against Jackson Pollock’s radical ‘action painting’ Summertime 1948, to examine the painted canvas as an arena in which performative gestures and experiments are acted out. It will go on to explore how paint has been used on the body as a surface, and how painting is now being used by contemporary artists to create social and theatrical spaces.
The exhibition will offer a unique chance to see how ‘action’ painters worked in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond, including Niki de Saint Phalle, Pinot Gallizio, the Japanese Gutai and Viennese Actionists. Rarely seen films and photographs will reveal how their experimental works were made, showing artists using the feet as brushes, snipping up canvases and shooting paintings with air rifles.
A Bigger Splash is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate Modern, with Fiontán Moran, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue by Tate Publishing.
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