Where to See David Hockney’s Last Works In London
With the great artist David Hockney passing away last week, his last works in the Serpentine Gallery in London, on view until August 23, become the ultimate farewell.
Last week, a truly momentous event hit the art world: one of the titans of the form, the grand gentleman of British art, David Hockney, who King Charles III described as “a giant of the world of art and painting” died peacefully. Hockney, a product of the disruptive Pop Art era, was the last of his brethren that included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat from that important movement and even Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and others who were his peers. His painting ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ fetched US$90.3 million, making it the most expensive painting in history by a then-living artist in 2018. Hockney will be mourned and missed as sad funeral processions and sombre words are said.
Hockney, however, wouldn’t want any of that. An artist known for his indefatigable pursuit of joy, of bucolic beauty, Hockney told us in his paintings and his words what he’d want as a requiem. He’d want those who love and miss him to go see his latest work—one of his largest ones he ever executed, and an outright homage to the beauty of seasons when paid attention to and their metaphorical value to life.
“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 explained a few months back as his last show—A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting—opened at the most appropriate space for such a work possible: the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London. It is there we should go to understand David Hockney and what his exit means to the world, and most importantly, what he wants us to know. His signature phrase—“Love Life”—is the refrain we should put on continuous loop as we memorialise him.
A Year Of Birth, A Year of Death
It was 2020-2021, the annus horribilis for our world as COVID drove all of us into lockdown. For many artists, sheltering in place is already a professional hazard; this will be an even heavier time. For Hockney, he turned it into inspiration and curiosity.
Hockney moved to Normandy in 2019 and chose the beautiful Pays d’Auge region to the east of Caen, near the delightful village of Beuvron-en-Auge, to become his new home. It is the landscape of this region through the seasons that inspired his main work of that period: a Bayeux Tapestry and Chinese mural homage called ‘A Year in Normandie (2020-2021)’ that demonstrates his whimsical, puckish style and philosophy as well as a sweeping expanse of history and meaning. Armed with his Apple iPad (Hockney embraced digital media), he set off to catalogue the changing seasons across his new adopted landscapes. Trees in various modes of transformation; timber and daub cottages that set different shadows and hues as the year moves forward. Blithe contemplation on nature, birth, death and time.
The output? A new masterpiece, 70 metres that references the Bayeux Tapestry’s soon-to-be 1,000th anniversary, which approaches this year; it connects where it was painted in Normandy, the launching point of history, as the Normans, led by the Viking-infused William the Conqueror, sailed to Hastings, England, to change British and European history.
‘A Year in Normandie (2020-2021)’ was first unveiled in the Bayeux Museum, France and now, travelling to London, completes its journey, just as Hockney himself left the continent to travel back to the UK. But instead of a war, with death and suffering, his digital tapestry asks us to focus on and obey the natural rhythm. Of seasons. Of life.
“We have lost touch with nature rather foolishly, as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will, in time, be over and then what? What have we learned? I am 83 years old, I will die. The cause of death is birth. The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like our little dog Ruby. I really believe this, and the source of art is love. I love life.”
‘David Hockney, A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting’ at Serpentine North, London, is exhibiting from now until August 23rd, 2026. For more information, visit the website.
Lead photo credit: George Darrell; Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima
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