At the ripe old age of 88, David Hockney has sounded a warning to the art world: “There’s much too much abstract painting being done now.”
He was recently speaking to the Times from his Kensington studio while recovering from an infection, and he was discussing his latest exhibition, “A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting” at the Serpentine, which he was unable to attend in person.
The show runs through August 23 and stretches nearly 300 feet, presenting a sweeping frieze of iPad drawings depicting the gardens of his Normandy home across all four seasons. Hockney’s work emphasizes observation and representation, a deliberate counterpoint to the abstraction dominating contemporary art. “Photography can’t replace painting at all, but painting has to be of something,” he said.
In addition to the landscape sequence, the exhibition includes portraits and still lifes set on reverse-perspective checkered tablecloths. These works reference abstract painters such as Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter yet remain grounded in figurative representation. Hockney has experimented with a new stippling technique, layering paint even when wet, influenced by his iPad work. “These marks are a bit different,” he said, reflecting his ongoing desire to innovate without abandoning subject matter.
The Serpentine show also harks to the Bayeux Tapestry, which is soon due in London for a blockbuster show at the British Museum. Hockney, a fan of the work, has blasted its transport from France to the UK as “madness.”
The artist has long admired Picasso, particularly the late-life embrace of figurative imagery. He draws a parallel between their careers, noting that both continued ambitious, representational work even when abstraction dominated the art world. “Even at the time of my lecture in 1984, nobody wanted to hear about it then, because abstraction reigned,” Hockney said.
The exhibition’s dialogue with the Bayeux Tapestry may be one of scale but it is also meant as a juxtaposition. While the tapestry recounts war and conquest, Hockney’s Normandy series celebrates nature, color, and the quiet rhythms of life, deliberately avoiding human conflict. “There is no war or death in my picture,” he told the Times, echoing his oft-repeated words: “Remember, they can’t cancel the spring.”
