\u2018He changed the world just by looking at it\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Obituary: David Hockney<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Six decades after David Hockney painted A Bigger Splash<\/a>, his most famous painting, reproductions have become a visual motif in gay domestic life. I\u2019ve seen framed posters, prints and postcards of the work \u2013 which captures the moment after a person jumps off a diving board into an otherwise still cyan blue swimming pool \u2013 in countless gay households. In my flat, it appears on a cushion cover that I bought after seeing the real thing at Hockney\u2019s 2017 Tate Britain retrospective<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fitting that A Bigger Splash is now emblematic of this pioneer. As an out gay artist who depicted same-sex desire in his work long before male homosexuality was partly decriminalised in England and Wales, Hockney and his paintings challenged the homophobia within the artistic establishment and beyond. And he did so not through the use of highly sexualised imagery, like the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, or with the activist themes of painter Keith Haring, but by reshaping our ideas of beauty, intimacy and desire. That\u2019s how he made the biggest splash.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ed63140f1ce28c79c6889f025f6ca727ad314cb2\/241_406_1889_1511\/master\/1889.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=192512cbdf91e7240888f90251728af9\" "\\"\u2018Suggestive")
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