At Serpentine Galleries in London, David Hockney's A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting places digital creation in direct conversation with art history. The centerpiece is a 295-foot composite iPad work, A Year in Normandie (2020-21), built from more than 100 printed digital images stitched into a panoramic sequence.
The exhibition draws on Hockney's long interest in how viewers move through images. Curated to encourage close looking and physical movement, the installation wraps around the gallery interior and references both Chinese scroll painting and the Bayeux Tapestry, linking contemporary tools with older visual traditions.
Alongside the digital work, the show includes acrylic paintings completed in 2025, where Hockney's familiar attention to color, perspective, and everyday scenes feels especially vivid. These canvases highlight the artist's continued interest in experimentation, from reversed perspectives to abstract forms placed within domestic settings.
More than a debate about medium, the exhibition reflects a broader shift in contemporary art: artists are increasingly blending tablets, software, and traditional painting to expand how images are made and experienced. Hockney's late-career work shows that digital tools can become part of a larger artistic language rather than a replacement for it.
As museums continue to embrace hybrid forms, this approach may help define a future where technology and craftsmanship evolve side by side.
