When David Hockney in the 1960s turned his attention to a photograph of a splash-splattered swimming pool, he did what most of us today, immersed in an endless stream of digital images, do not. He kept looking. For two weeks, the artist worked tirelessly from the photo to perfect his rendition in his acrylic painting A Bigger Splash, of the dancing droplets that erupted when some long-forgotten swimmer threw themselves into the deep end. The splash ended in an instant. Yet captured in Hockney's most famous work, it lives on, an unremarkable backyard moment afforded the scrupulous attention of a royal portrait. In devoting such deep focus, Hockney, who died Thursday at the age of 88, restored something that had been lost in that original image. The artist thought that paintings and drawings have a certain depth that photography on its own lacks. He spoke of this with intensity in his later years, saying in a 2013 interview with Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County...
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