At 88 years old, the late David Hockney departed as the ultimate iconoclast of optical pleasure. Until his final days, in an era often clouded by cynicism and digital fatigue, the Yorkshire-born master asserted a fiercely defiant worldview: art must be an act of profound, transformative joy. Marking his late-career debut presentation at Serpentine North, A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting stands as a monumental testament to his legacy, bringing together the artist’s sweeping panoramic iPad frieze alongside a tightly controlled suite of oil paintings and site-specific garden installations.

Hockney’s enduring mantra—”Love Life”—is not a passive sentiment, but a rigorous painterly ethic. By combining the immediacy of plein air observation with the luminous luminescence of digital tablets, Hockney reclaims the act of seeing as an urgent, emotional practice.

The Tablecloth Suite: Abstraction on a Gingham Canvas

At the heart of the new works unveiled inside Serpentine North stands a ten-canvas installation: five still lifes paired directly with five portraits of Hockney’s inner circle, including family members and dedicated carers.

The collection is anchored by two strict formal devices: a uncompromisingly direct frontal composition and the ubiquitous, red-and-white check of a gingham tablecloth.

For Hockney, the grid of the tablecloth serves as a arena where figurative representation and flat abstraction collide.

All figurative painting is inherently abstract, so long as it exists upon a flat surface.

– Hockney notes.

The checkered weave provides a rigid geometric scaffolding, against which the soft contours of a face, the curve of a teacup, or the organic drape of clothing push and pull in vibrant spatial tension.

Scrolling Through Seasons: The Normandy Frieze

Stretching across the perimeter gallery, A Year in Normandie (2020–2021) makes its celebrated London debut. Created during the isolation of the global pandemic at his historic studio in rural France, the monumental digital frieze comprises over 100 composite iPad paintings seamlessly joined into a continuous narrative.

Drawing direct inspiration from the continuous narrative flow of 11th-century Bayeux Tapestries and traditional Chinese scroll painting, Hockney rejects the single-point perspective that has dominated Western art since the Renaissance. Instead, he invites the viewer to walk alongside the changing seasons—watching bare winter branches burst into pop-hued blossoms, deepen into summer canopies, and decay into autumnal rust.

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.

— David Hockney

From Gallery to Garden: Extending the Canvas

The exhibition spills beyond the gallery’s interior walls into the surrounding landscape of Kensington Gardens. At the rear of the North Gallery, a massive, site-specific printed mural depicting a treehouse—a key motif from the spring cycle of A Year in Normandie—hangs in dialogue with the living trees of the park.

Hockney’s dialogue with natural light continues coastalward this spring. Marking Turner Contemporary’s 15th anniversary in Margate, the artist will unveil the massive Sunley Window on April 1, 2026—a monumental 7-by-10-meter installation transforming the gallery’s floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the North Sea into a brilliant filter of pure, radiant color.

Through every medium he touched—from traditional oils to glass and digital pixels—David Hockney proved that the simple act of looking closely remains one of the most radical, joyful acts a human being can perform.

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting was on view at Serpentine North, London, through August 23, 2026.