partially decriminalised some six years later, in 1967<\/a>, when the law changed to allow sex between two men “in private”, so long as they were both over the age of 21.<\/p>\nThe 1961 painting, inspired by a Walt Whitman poem of the same name, was an early statement of intent by an artist who would go on to become a defining figure of British \u2013 and LGBT+ \u2013 culture.<\/p>\n
Over the next decade, Hockney continued to break social taboos by celebrating same-sex relationships in his art – often by depicting the quiet, everyday moments of gay domestic life.<\/p>\n
There is an underground quality to some of Hockney’s early work. His pictures are reminiscent of graffiti: spiky, expressive and defiant, rendered in bold lines and block colours.<\/p>\n
“He was really pioneering as somebody who was unashamedly proud of his queerness before the legalisation of homosexuality in ’67,” says Dominic James Bilton, the co-leader of the Queer British Art Network.<\/p>\n
In these early paintings, Hockney “showed and made work on same-sex relationships and desire and sexuality” at a time when “not a lot of people were doing that”.<\/p>\n
Hockney’s style changed radically a few years later, after he travelled to California for the first time in 1964. There he painted his famous swimming pool pictures.<\/p>\n
In one 1966 painting, Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool, a nude man climbs from the water of a swimming pool, his back to the viewer, head turned as though in conversation with someone just out of frame.<\/p>\n
The 1963 painting Domestic Scene, Los Angeles shows one man in a shower while another man washes his back.<\/p>\n
“Those works are so queer, so sensual and sexy and playful and joyous,” Bilton says, adding they also show the “domesticity” and “dull aspects of gay relationships”.<\/p>\n
Hockney was “normalising same-sex relationships… that we take for granted”, Bilton suggests, adding the artist showed that gay people “are just normal people… doing normal stuff, looking at our partners and thinking: ‘oh, you’re beautiful'”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of David Hockney’s early paintings depicts a couple wrapped in an embrace. Painted in 1961, this picture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-636171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}