Which artist would you let loose on your swimming pool? For the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel in Los Angeles, there was one obvious choice: the pool-inclined British painter David Hockney. “Legend has it that Mr. Hockney came to The Hollywood Roosevelt one beautiful morning in 1988 with a can of blue paint and a six-inch paint brush tied to a broom handle,” a representative of the hotel told Hotel Business in 2019—a scene preserved for posterity in this excellent archive photo. “Over the span of about four hours… he covered it with his signature circular brush strokes. Once the pool was refilled, the art seemingly came to life… weaving and dancing under the sunny Los Angeles sky.”
