David Hockney Exhibition Delights with Its Intriguing Experience

David Hockney, aged 88, has turned a year in his Normandy garden into a sweeping visual diary. He made roughly a hundred iPad sketches during 2020. Those images now form a 90-metre frieze at Serpentine North.

Panoramic frieze and digital marks

The frieze unfurls as a walk-through panorama of the seasons. It reads like a musical movement, alternately crisp and lyrical.

Printed panels are pinned to the wall with gold pins. Visible joins and digital spray-can blending remain on view.

Colour, light and subject

Hockney pares the garden to bold essentials. Winter mist, skeletal trees and exuberant spring blossom sit side by side.

His blues and yellows push the landscape toward a heightened reality. Tiny gestures render chairs, shadows and leaves with economy.

Site-specific installation

The show playfully responds to Serpentine North’s bucolic setting. A large outdoor replica of a blossom-and-sky painting stands in the grounds.

On the reviewer’s visit, the painted sky seemed brighter than the actual sky. The painted blossom outshone the real trees.

New oil paintings in the gunpowder store

At the gallery’s heart, a former gunpowder store houses ten new oils. Five are witty riffs on famous abstract styles, served atop a bright checked tablecloth.

The other five are portraits of people close to Hockney. They include his nephew, his partner, and his carer in blue scrubs, wearing a badge saying: “End Bossiness Now.”

Strengths and small missteps

The show champions speed, sprezzatura and a light touch. Occasional lapses include a hastily drawn red house that feels out of place.

Some works might have benefited from tighter curation. Still, the exhibition delights with generous invention and warmth.

Art-historical threads and technology

Hockney nods to the Bayeux Tapestry in his frieze-like sequencing. Occasional motifs recall Van Gogh and Hiroshige in brief, confident strokes.

The project also acts as proof of concept for screen-based painting. It answers earlier skeptics, including those who noted his iPad work at the RA in 2012.

Context and access

Creating a concentrated study of nature during 2020 felt, at times, a deliberate withdrawal from headline events. That choice gives the work an emotional charge.

The show is free to visit. Filmogaz.com recommends it as an intriguing experience for visitors and as evidence of what artists can achieve on screens.