The painting, ten feet wide, is a window onto a world. The slim man in the peachy-pink(桃粉色的) jacket stands by the edge of the pool, looking down, uncertain. Someone is swimming underwater towards him; a young man, clad in(穿着……的) modest white trunks. The hills beyond the pool make overlapping triangles of cerulean blue, of olive, sage and lime. They could be those of California or Provence—or even biblical Galilee(①加利利是以色列北部地区，新约中耶稣传道...). Ever since the Renaissance, artists have painted bathers washing off stains and sin amid the peace of nature. David Hockney, who created this scene, knew that. He studied them all. The swimmer’s arms are outstretched. In the blue amniotic(羊水的；充满羊水的) water he could be an angel. Or a new lover.
这幅十英尺宽的画作，是一扇通往另一个世界的窗口。穿桃粉色夹克的瘦削男子站在泳池边，低头凝视，神情犹豫。有人正从水下向他游来——一个穿着朴素白色泳裤的年轻人。池后的山丘叠映出天蓝、橄榄绿、鼠尾草色和柠檬色的三角形。它们可以是加利福尼亚，可以是普罗旺斯，甚至可以是圣经中的加利利。自文艺复兴以来，艺术家就常常描绘沐浴者在宁静自然中洗去污渍与罪恶的场景。创作这幅画的霍克尼深谙此道，他研习过所有前人的作品。泳者的双臂伸展。在蓝色的羊水中，他像一位天使，又像一个新情人。
It is a double portrait, one of many that made him famous in the 1960s and 1970s on both sides of the Atlantic. The last time “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)” changed hands(易手；转手), in 2018, it became the most expensive picture by a living artist to be sold at auction. Swimming pools thrilled him from the moment he flew into Los Angeles at the age of 26, leaving grey post-war England behind, and saw the little blue oblongs(长方形；矩形) tiling the city below. So did the challenge of painting water, with its unscripted(无剧本的；即兴的) colours, its surfaces that shimmered in two dimensions, and its tension.
这是一幅双人肖像，也是20世纪60、70年代让他在大西洋两岸声名鹊起的众多肖像之一。最近一次《艺术家肖像（泳池与两个人像）》易手是在2018年，它成为在世艺术家作品中最昂贵的拍卖画作。泳池自始至终让他兴奋，从他26岁飞抵洛杉矶、告别灰暗的战时英格兰、看到下方城市格子般铺展的蓝色小长方形那一刻起就是如此。同样令他兴奋的是画水的挑战：水有不可预料的颜色，有在二维表面上闪烁的表面，还有它的张力。
Having decided on the composition, he used props and photographs, played with perspectives, and paced out(步测；踱步测量) measurements in the studio: all the techniques he’d learned at art school and since. Mostly, though, he was working from the heart. Painting was how he made sense of the world. His brushes helped assuage(减轻；缓和（痛苦等）) the pain of the terrible break-up a year earlier, when the man standing by the pool had left him for a young Swede, tall and blond, and his mother, his staunchest(最坚定的；最忠诚的) ally, was the only person he could bear to have around.
在确定构图后，他用了道具和照片，玩弄透视，在工作室里用脚步丈量尺寸——这些都是他在艺术学校及之后学到的技巧。然而，大部分时候，他是发自内心在创作。绘画是他理解世界的方式。他的画笔帮助他缓解一年前那次可怕分手带来的痛苦：当时站在泳池边的那个男人为了一个高个子金发的瑞典年轻人离开了他，而他的母亲，他最坚定的盟友，是他唯一能忍受在身边陪伴的人。
