David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting – Serpentine North, London

The new David Hockney show at Serpentine North showcases his monumental frieze, A Year in Normandie, together with some new works referred to in the subtitle Some Other Thoughts about Painting. There is also a site-specific printed mural in the garden – a large image of a tree house taken from Hockney’s Normandy work.

To be honest, there’s not a lot of novelty here. The main draw for Londoners is the fact that A Year in Normandie 2020-2021 has not been shown here before. But we’ve already had ample opportunity to view the vivid work Hockney created on his iPad during lockdown. In 2021, the Royal Academy exhibited The Arrival of Spring, Normandy 2020, presenting his images in digital frames. Since then, the wonderful immersive show at Lightroom in 2023, David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away), has delighted audiences with its kaleidoscopic presentation of a wealth of his work and words.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine, and CEO Bettina Korek emphasise the fact that audiences can view this show for free, and it certainly works well in the parkland setting of Serpentine North. What might this exhibition add to our enjoyment of Hockney’s art? The beauty of the frieze, which curves around the darkened walls of the gallery at eye level, is its continuity. Influenced by the Bayeux Tapestry and by Chinese scroll paintings, Hockney blends individual images so that we are hardly aware of the transition. He brings to life the age-old narrative of the changing of the seasons with evident delight, and it’s certainly a pleasure to see these vivid images in this configuration.

Of course, one of the joys of Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) was the dazzling richness of ever-moving images, words and music. A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting offers quieter pleasures. What we get is the chance to get up close to appreciate the extraordinary range of Hockney’s mark-making. From Seurat-like dots of colour to loose dashes, he employs endless varieties of strokes. Leaves in the later images of autumn are presented as overlapping diamonds in shades of lemon and lime; the gradations of a green bank as it slopes to the river are denoted by tiny lines and circles. Different species of trees and flowers are readily identifiable.

And it’s this variety in Hockney’s work that remains compelling. Dullish skies of early spring give way to a range of intense blues of summer, some cloud-filled, one notably capturing a fall of lilac rain. The focus of early scenes is often on a single bare-branched tree. This focus then pulls back to show Hockney’s half-timbered, red-roofed Normandy farmhouse, sometimes standing proud in the garden, sometimes seen far off, nestling beneath a landscape of fields and distant hills. Dots of pale yellow blossom begin to appear on the trees, then the vibrant green of new leaves. The red roof of the house glows with greater intensity, then mutes to orange in the sun of late summer.

It will always be a pleasure to see this work.

And what of the new paintings created using the more traditional medium of acrylic on canvas? Painted in his London studio, these consist of five abstract still lives and five portraits of friends and family. They are, perhaps, best seen as further evidence of Hockney’s continuing commitment to experimentation. The dominant motif in each is the small table at which the sitter or the abstract image is posed, dead centre. Each table is covered with a checked tablecloth – a nod to his love of France – and in each, Hockney plays with the idea of reverse perspective – the table growing smaller the closer it is to the viewer. They are cheerfully likeable portraits, but Hockney’s gnomic reflection, ‘They’re about painting, the painting of a person,’ doesn’t open them up much.  Joe Hage Resting on a Green and White Checkered Tablecloth intrigues because of the attention Hockney pays to the background: behind the sitter is an abstracted suggestion of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, but it seems to be a private reference, impossible to decode.

We can only marvel at the 88-year-old Hockney’s creative energy. And above all, this show reminds us of Hockney’s exhortation simply to look.

Runs until 23 August 2026