Hockney at Serpentine now
David Hockney’s exhibition 'A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting' is running at London’s Serpentine North Gallery now through August 23 — a spring show mixing his abstract and figurative impulses. Reviews flag the work’s signature optimism and Hockney’s ongoing experimentation with painting and place. (attitude.co.uk)
Serpentine’s press materials say the show includes ten new paintings made for the gallery — five still lifes and five portraits of people from Hockney’s close circle, explicitly citing family and carers and a recurring gingham tablecloth motif across the works. (serpentinegalleries.org) (serpentinegalleries.org) The exhibition brings Hockney’s panoramic frieze A Year in Normandie (2020–2021) to London for the first time and describes the work as a composite assembled from more than 100 iPad paintings created during 2020–21. (d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net) (serpentinegalleries.org) Serpentine has installed a site-specific, large-scale printed mural in the Serpentine North garden that reproduces a tree‑house scene from the frieze and sits at the back of the North Gallery. (serpentinegalleries.org) (serpentinegalleries.org) Published accounts give different measurements for the frieze: one review records it as 80.1 metres long, Serpentine and museum partners describe it as about 90 metres, and art outlets have also reported it as roughly 300 feet. (londonartroundup.com) (londonartroundup.com; sothebys.com; artnet.com) Serpentine notes the presentation is the artist’s first at the institution and that admission to the exhibition is free, with a press view held on the morning of 11 March. (serpentinegalleries.org) (serpentinegalleries.org) Press materials credit curator Hans Ulrich Obrist with close collaboration on the show and describe Hockney, aged 88, as combining abstract and figurative modes across the new paintings and the panoramic frieze. (d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net) (serpentinegalleries.org)
