Muse Betty Freeman sits at the centre of this sun-drenched book about art, eccentricity, and the spirit of Los Angeles<\/p>\n
David Hockney was 29 years old\u00a0when he came to Betty Freeman\u2019s house to photograph her swimming pool. Scouting locations for the pool paintings that would make him a household name, he took preparatory snaps of his partner, Peter Schlesinger, emerging naked from the water. And yet something about his aloof and quietly eccentric host, who dusted the hunting trophies while a handsome young man padded around her patio in the altogether, intrigued the\u00a0artist. So he asked whether he might photograph her too,\u00a0and she agreed.<\/p>\n
Completed a year later, Beverly Hills\u00a0Housewife (1966\/7) shows a beautiful woman standing outside a\u00a0beautiful house. The scene is lit by an\u00a0unbroken sun, her blond bob is undisturbed by any breeze, a lush fern sets off her popping pink dress. She is\u00a0surrounded by the symbols of mid-century American prosperity: a\u00a0chair\u00a0by Le Corbusier, a tasteful modernist sculpture. We don\u2019t need the title to know the place and time, because Hockney\u2019s paintings have come to define them in our imagination: shimmering water and scattered light, bright colours and reflective surfaces, a clean and impassive contentment.<\/p>\n
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