Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980

David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967
Hockney arrived in L.A. from London in 1963. As he observed later, with just a bit of exaggeration, at the time, "there were no paintings of Los Angeles." He would make them, with images like this one, which celebrates swimming-pool culture while also constructing an art-world in-joke, contrasting ultracool color-field painting (those flat blue panels of sky and water) with the hyperkinetic brushwork of Abstract Expressionism (the splash), a style that color field and other forms of minimalism supplanted.

At the J. Paul Getty Museum

• California's Changing Landscape