Peter, fully dressed, looks down at a boy in white trunks swimming a length of the pool below. Turquoise hills stretch away into sunlight behind them. David Hockney’s stunning diagram of LA heat and cool blue water, frozen in stylised ripples, appears perfectly lucid in its equipoise of figure, hue and geometry, yet also tense and mysterious. What is the relationship between the two men: the swimmer submerged and unaware, the sentinel watching unseen from above?
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) was painted in 1972. This monumental masterpiece has changed hands several times since, but never so conspicuously as in the winter of 2018, when it sold at Christie’s for $90m (£71m), breaking records for the most expensive work by a living artist.
