LONDON CALLING: David Hockney is on a tear. Following successful shows at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and Annely Juda Fine Art in London, the artist is staging his first exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in Hyde Park.
“A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting” opens Thursday and runs until Aug. 23. It features a series of new paintings, including portraits of Hockney’s family and carers and the monumental frieze “A Year in Normandie (2020-2021),” on view in London for the first time.
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The frieze extends across the perimeter gallery of Serpentine North, charting the change of seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy, France.
The Serpentine will also present a large-scale printed mural by Hockney in the garden at Serpentine North. It highlights a scene from “A Year in Normandie’s” spring cycle, depicting a tree house. The digital print will be displayed at the back of the North Gallery, echoing its creation in Hockney’s own garden in Normandy.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine, and curator of the show, said: “At 88, David Hockney continues to explore the language of painting with remarkable ingenuity, fusing figurative and abstract modes across still lifes, portraits, and a panoramic frieze comprising more than 100 iPad paintings,” he said.
Obrist added: “In his new portraits, he captures not only his sitters but also the very act of seeing, while the frieze offers a deeply personal meditation on the passage of time. The changing seasons will resonate throughout the gallery, and a new mural in the garden of Serpentine North highlights the transition from spring to summer as the surrounding landscape undergoes its own renewal.”
Hockney spent time during the pandemic in Normandy and produced more than 100 digital paintings on his iPad, which he assembled to create the frieze. The format of “A Year in Normandie” was inspired by Chinese scroll paintings as well as the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry.
He believes art has a curative, uplifting power. “I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure.…There is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering, but I believe that my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair.…New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling. I do believe that painting can change the world,” Hockney said.
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