In 2018, David Hockney’s 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for an eye-popping $90.3 million at Christie’s, breaking the record for the most expensive artwork by a living artist to be sold at auction. Now Christie’s is putting an earlier Hockney pool painting, California (1965), up for auction. Created one year after Hockney moved to Santa Monica, the painting—which has not been seen publicly since 1979—depicts two nude men lying on floats in a bright blue pool. The artist found great inspiration in pools, a luxury in his native England and common in Los Angeles, which he viewed as a liberated utopia—especially for gay men—and called “the world’s most beautiful city.” The painting is expected to fetch an estimated $16 million. —Paulina Prosnitz