Jack Hazan's 'A Bigger Splash' Reimagines David Hockney's Creative Process

Jack Hazan's film 'A Bigger Splash' offers a cinematic portrait of David Hockney, focusing on the creation of his painting 'Portrait of an Artist.' Rather than a straightforward documentary, Hazan uses montage to blend temporalities, showing Hockney at work but also incorporating pre-existing visual strata—press photos, Polaroids, postcards—that inform his painting. The film disrupts real-time practice, immersing viewers in heterogeneous duration where invention, sketches, and even destruction of the work unfold. Released in a new print in January 2008, the DVD will be available in September 2008. The film aligns with André Bazin's view that cinema can penetrate pictorial space and with Picasso's and Bacon's ideas about layers beneath the surface. Dork Zabunyan reviewed the film for artpress.