David Hockney and Piero della Francesca: Still Water as a Gaze Device

Andrea Bruciati compares the depiction of water in Piero della Francesca's "Baptism of Christ" (1437-1445, National Gallery, London) and David Hockney's Los Angeles pool paintings from the 1960s. In both, water is not natural but a visual device that suspends time and exposes the body to the gaze. Hockney, who cited Piero as an influence in a 1988 interview with Lawrence Weschler (published in "True to Life", 2008), transforms the pool into a relational space where desire is visible yet regulated. Works like "A Bigger Splash" (1967) and "Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool" (1966) freeze action, leaving only traces of the body. The article argues that this structural isomorphism—water as a liminal surface—creates a regime of looking that resists today's accelerated visual culture.