A Year in Normandy features iPad works with which British artist brought people comfort during Covid crisis
In the spring of 2020, as the Covid-19 virus was “going mad”, David Hockney kept himself busy by painting winter trees bursting into blossom in his Normandy garden. “Many people said my drawings were a great respite from what was going on,” Britain’s pre-eminent living artist said at the time.
Citizens of the post-pandemic world, with its rollercoaster of conflict, rightwing populism, climate crisis and techno-revolution, may still be in need of Hockney’s respite by next spring. They will find it at an exhibition of his extraordinary 90-metre frieze, A Year in Normandy, and other works at the Serpentine gallery in London.
The free exhibition is likely to draw thousands of fans of the 88-year-old artist, adored for his vibrant images, bluff Yorkshire manner and defiant advocacy of smoking.
The show will be mounted in the same year as the Bayeux tapestry – cited by Hockney as an inspiration for his frieze, and described by the artist as “one of the oldest and most remarkable artworks” – comes to London for the first time in nearly 1,000 years in a cultural exchange with France.
