David Hockney's gay art made a splash when it mattered

Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool, the painter's masterpiece of audacious desire, won the John Moores prize in the year homosexuality was decriminalised

David Hockney takes the making of art extremely seriously. He thinks and writes deeply about painting and photography. He has advanced a theory about the secret use of the camera in pre-modern art. Today, his own art is as much an argument about visual truth as a search for pictorial pleasure: relying on what he defines as drawing's essential elements of hand, eye and heart, he makes accurate Yorkshire landscapes.

He wasn't always so worthy.

A new exhibition of Hockney's early work has just opened at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, which happens to own one of my all-time favourite Hockneys.

This 1966 painting is called Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool. Why do I love it? I admire its courage and clarity. Hockney watches Peter's nude back and bottom as his tanned form emerges from crystalline blue water. The image of a beautiful human body rising out of water is one of the great fantasies of European art: this painting is a male version of theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds