For our newest blog series, staff at The Modern House were asked to list the location, film, painting, building, or piece of music that first inspired their interest in Modernism.

For Charlotte, our marketing coordinator, it was David Hockney’s ‘A Bigger Splash’, which currently resides in the Tate Britain.

Charlotte says:

‘I can remember seeing this at home when I was really young, and admiring the colours. When I was 16 I recreated a couple of Hockney’s swimming pool pictures for the landscape module of my Art GCSE, spending hours and hours with gaffer tape, a ruler and various paint rollers, getting it really, really precise.

After I finished my exams I went to visit family in Big Sur and the landscape really reminded me of ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ – that was a totally idyllic holiday and really sealed the paintings in my mind. I felt like they captured a distinctly Californian atmosphere and energy.

When I came to London to study I started visiting the Tate regularly, to look at ‘A Bigger Splash’. I probably like it so much because it includes so many things I really love: single storey buildings, big windows, California, tall skinny palm trees and swimming pools.

It also reminds me of the mid-Century house aesthetic in Palm Springs, which is probably my favourite style of architecture in the world (for the next fortnight at least).’