#Its a living art series

Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) has been exhibited publicly in Hong Kong, London and LA ahead of the sale but will now probably disappear into a private collection. While the art world is abuzz about the possible record, Hockney himself seems unfazed, telling Reuters from London, where he was receiving a lifetime artistic achievement award from Queen Sonja of Norway, he’s ignoring the hype and that he has “the vanity of an artist - I want my work to be seen but I don’t have to be seen”. Hockney is regarded as one of the best-known and loved artists in the world as evidenced by the million people who attended a touring retrospective exhibition of his work shown at Tate Britain, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year. As he told CNN in a 2017 interview: “I always loved swimming pools, all the wiggly lines they make … If you photograph them, it freezes them whereas, if you use paint, you can have wiggly lines that wiggle.”

#Its a living art series

The work is also a prime example of Hockney’s well-known series of paintings of swimming pools, which fascinated him when he arrived in Los Angeles from gloomy England in the 1960s.

The work also has a deeply personal resonance for the artist as the man in pink is his one-time lover and muse Philip Schlesinger, whose relationship with the artist came to an end as Hockney was finishing the painting. The painting, which depicts a young man in a pink jacket leaning over the edge of a swimming pool watching another man swimming, is being touted by Christie’s as significant because it represents two key themes of Hockney’s work – swimming pools and the double portrait – in one canvas. The auction house has not revealed the identity of the seller but CBC reports it is believed to be owned by British financier Joe Lewis, who bought it from media mogul David Geffen in the 1980s. The 81-year-old British artist’s work is expected to fetch $80-million (R1,15-billion) breaking the previous record, held by Jeff Koons for one of his Balloon Dog sculptures, which sold in 2013 for $58,4-million (R845-million). On Thursday night, it’s likely the record for the price of an artwork by a living artist will be smashed when David Hockney’s 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) goes on sale at Christie’s in New York.