Approaching 90, David Hockney is still operating on a grand scale. It takes a singular artist to look at all 314 feet of the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry and answer it with an equally ambitious response.
His A Year in Normandie (2020–21), a 300-foot-long frieze made on an iPad, has now been unveiled at Serpentine North in London as part of the exhibition, “David Hockney, A Year in Normandie And Some Other Thoughts About Painting.” The work draws on Hockney’s long-standing fascination with the Normandy landscape while also engaging with art history, including the Bayeux Tapestry’s medieval woodland imagery.
The monumental piece extends Hockney’s ongoing exploration of digital painting, transforming his observations of place and season into a sweeping visual narrative. Its scale and medium underscore the artist’s continued interest in how technology can be used to rethink landscape.
The exhibition also brings together other recent works that further develop Hockney’s experiments with digital tools and landscape imagery. Seen alongside the frieze, they place A Year in Normandie within his wider investigation of abstraction, perception, and the experience of place.
