The time they tried to paint over Hockney’s Hollywood pool mural

Good morning, it’s Thursday, June 25, you can expect slightly cooler weather with a high of 79°.

The mural that the British painter David Hockney created on the bottom of the Hollywood Roosevelt's Tropicana Pool in 1987 was an apt pairing of artist and obsession. Hockney — a true Hollywood booster and pool aficionado who died June 11 at the age of 88 — was at the peak of his celebrity in Los Angeles in the late '80s.

His work was the subject of a sprawling 1988 retrospective at LACMA that became the most well-attended exhibition of a contemporary artist in the museum's history to that point.

Hockney was commissioned to paint the pool as part of the celebration of the Hollywood Centennial, which was, among other things, aimed at revitalizing a decaying Hollywood district. Using a paintbrush attached to the bottom of a broomstick, he marked the bottom of the roughly 80-foot-long pool with lively, thick blue squiggles.

By all accounts, the hotel was thrilled with its new pool design, which brought a contemporary edge to the fading hotel famous for being the temporary home of Marilyn Monroe and the site of the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.

Hockney spent four hours and $75 worth of paint to complete the mural in March 1987. The pigment was barely dry before bureaucracy nearly erased Los Angeles's newest artistic treasure.

State inspectors determined the mural violated safety rules prohibiting human-looking figures in public pool designs — a measure intended to protect swimmers by ensuring their visibility.

Dave Quinton, consulting sanitarian at the California Department of Health Services, told the Wall Street Journal at the time that Hockney's macaroni-like designs might be mistaken for "a small child or a person in fetal form."

California Assemblyman Mike Roos represented the Hollywood Roosevelt's district at the time. Originally from Tennessee, he told L.A. Material that Hockney "captured a California that, in my mind's eye, was the California that drew me here." Roos thought the health department’s assessment was preposterous. His chief of staff told the Wall Street Journal, "They are just small brush strokes like little apostrophes. It's not like a person would just blend in."

Roos set out to prevent the mural from being painted over. (Inspectors wanted a fresh coat of white.) From a poolside press conference, Roos said, "There are conspicuously bad cases where enforcement of regulations runs contrary to the public interest."

"I don't know of any bill that I had ever seen move through the legislature as quickly as that did," Roos recalled this week. The bill exempting the Hollywood Roosevelt pool from the safety rules was introduced in January 1988 and signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian in March.

The mural's survival was commemorated with a lavish poolside champagne celebration in April 1988. "It was epic," Roos recalls. "There were easily 100 to 120 people there." According to the Los Angeles Times, Hockney attended wearing a polka-dot tie and striped shirt.

Since then, visitors to the Hollywood Roosevelt have been able to take a dip or sit poolside and admire Hockney's most meta pool work — though it seems there may be a new chapter in the drama over its preservation.

Recently, the hotel's front desk manager told The New York Times, "We closed the pool for multiple days last year to have the work restored … The crazy part is we worked with a painter sanctioned by Hockney's studio. They used the wrong kind of paint or something."

Management at the Hollywood Roosevelt declined multiple requests for comment for this story.

A Facebook post showcasing photos of Hockney painting the pool went viral in the days after his death, receiving thousands of likes and dozens of comments, including: "Was at the pool last month and the bottom REALLY needs to be properly restored."

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GRATITUDE ADJUSTMENT: For Alta Journal, writer Lydia Horne followed the family behind the much-discussed Larchmont vegan restaurant Cafe Gratitude to a small town in Texas — where they've started a cattle ranch with funding from Kanye West and realigned themselves with RFK Jr.'s MAHA movement.

In today's archival footage flashback from the early '90s, the Regional Transportation District and the L.A. Raiders link up for a public service announcement that's anti-graffiti but possibly pro-concussion… A Raider rams into a brick wall covered with mildly occult, spray-painted markings — which shatter cybernetically. Are you down to "sack graffiti?"

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Why I am Not a Painter” by Frank O’Hara. 

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