Splash Forward

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As a person whose main interests in life are Movies and Gay Stuff and Art, not always in that order, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've never seen the 1974 doc about the painter David Hockney called A Bigger Splash -- I actually didn't even know the film existed until Luca Guadagnino releasing an unrelated film with the same title and googling uncovered the earlier one, and even then I didn't really care too much about Hockney until the Met here in New York had their great big Hockney exhibit last year, which I ended up visiting several times and which finally got me on-board.

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I really appreciate how much time David Hockney clearly spent on his men’s asses pic.twitter.com/zsXTv3x1Yo

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) February 3, 2018

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No not (just) that. I'd just always written Hockney off as too California for my taste -- like a sunnier Francis Bacon, which kind of voids out the very idea of "Francis Bacon" that I like. But standing there in a room with all of those massive portraits proved to me I'd been wrong. His use of color and space is smart and intoxicating, while genuinely capturing something of his subjects and expressing a feeling, a time and a place, that nobody else did. That's about all any artist can hope for in the long run.

Anyway the happy news is that A Bigger Splash -- which hasn't been seen much since it was released in 1974 so it's not entirely my fault for not knowing about it -- has just gotten a fancy 4K restoration and will be playing here in NYC at The Metrograph to start with come June 21st. That'll be a lovely way to spend Pride Week!