As surely as one season follows another, the stream of iPad paintings emerging from David Hockney’s studio continues unabated. It’s an abundance no one asked for, except that when you make your inevitable exit via the shop at Serpentine North, where Hockney’s latest exhibition is now on show, you see how brilliantly his exuberantly coloured creations translate to cheery merch, from cushions and baseball caps – and why not – to badges and stickers.
We live in difficult times and these small pleasures feel important. From brilliant sunshine, I entered the darkened gallery – like entering the Black Hole of Calcutta, as another visitor put it – in which Hockney’s giant frieze, A Year in Normandie, wrapped around the walls like some giant glow worm.
Printed on paper, the frieze depicts the seasons unfolding around the artist’s home at La Grande Cour, the ancient Norman farmhouse where he has lived since 2019. The general thrust is very much that of Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, the artist’s project documenting the arrival of spring during the pandemic, with some of those “paintings” of verdant fields and blossoming trees among those included in the frieze.
The exhibition shows the seasons unfolding in Normandy (Photo: Esther Midgen)
At the time, Hockney’s Covid offerings, including a picture of daffodils titled Do Remember They Can’t Cancel the Spring, were well-received, the generosity of the gesture allowing him to get away with what might have been interpreted as tactless, when so many were horribly confined. Now, as the never-ending repercussions of the lockdowns continue, this frieze is glaringly inappropriate as a portrait of 2020 as Hockney apparently would have it.
It’s not just that their moment has passed. Seen on screen, Hockney’s iPad paintings made sense. And as a highly portable medium for a very old man, the iPad’s convenience and immediacy is perfectly sensible.
But as painting, the frieze doesn’t work. It wants to be immersive, but even its spotlit presentation implies the intervention of an iPad screen, as a constant if invisible barrier between viewer and viewed. It’s no coincidence that Hockney’s depiction of rain, viewed from indoors as it batters the window, comes as a relief – finally, here is acknowledgement of that unseen but undeniable impediment.
The trouble is that as sophisticated and bespoke as Hockney’s ever-evolving box of digital tricks is, the marks it allows him to make are mediated by a machine, and so while impressively calligraphic, they never have the presence or the individuality of the painted or drawn marks that he is actually so adept at producing.
The exhibition features 10 new paintings in acrylic (Photo: Esther Midgen)
Deep down, Hockney knows this, which is why the show includes 10 new paintings, split evenly between portraits and still lives in acrylic, all set at a table covered with a gingham cloth, rendered in reverse perspective, which, Hockney argues, more accurately imitates the way we see the world from simultaneous, multiple, viewpoints.
Hockney is not far off 90, which means he is entitled to a certain amount of respect for his life’s work, even if it means indulging his obsession with iPads. It’s tempting to say “he’s doing well for his age”, but to do him credit, the best response is to grab a handful of his lovely badges, and go back out into nature’s most vivid season, which he like no other artist of his time has made his own.
David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, Serpentine North until 23 August