David Hockney: Some very, very, very new paintings that haven’t yet been shown in Paris – Review: Still innovative, still brilliant | David Hockney

HDavid Hockney is still working on it. Hockney is 88 years old, and more than 60 years after a career that has seen him rise to the top of contemporary art, Hockney is still painting, still experimenting, still creating, still performing.

This exhibition – the first in an ultra-plush central London location for Anneli Gowda, his gallery since the 1990s – is so full of new paintings that you can almost smell the wet paint. The opening room features amazingly bright still lifes: chairs, tables, fruits and flowers. It’s the most old-fashioned and sober subject matter, but nothing Hockney does is quite that boring, is there?

The Van Gogh-y wicker chairs feature neon yellow and luminous purple; Its floors are clashing compositions of red, yellow and orange hues. Its fruit is all primary, basic and childish. All the while, he plays with what he calls “reverse perspective,” an attempt to replicate the way we actually see the world, not the static view of life we ​​get in photographs and other paintings. So everything seems wobbly and twisted. The legs of his chair are spread apart, and the tablecloths are crooked. I don’t think it’s any closer to “real” perspective than traditional drawing, but the disorienting visual discomfort it creates is fun. Pictures of gardens are pasted into some of the compositions – little glimpses of somewhat dull English reality that make the rest of each work brighter and brighter.

What you can’t really avoid is how much shakier those brush marks are than they used to be. Classic Hockney is so confident, so in control of his paintbrush, but these new works are almost shockingly unstable. The brush marks are full of squiggles and shivers, lines are spread throughout the shop, and bits of white paint are visible everywhere. It’s almost a mess, but it’s still immediate, unique and recognizable for him. It’s a very emotional and moving experience – we’re watching one of the greatest artists of the modern era age before our eyes. Compare all of this with the very early works shown at another show earlier this year, and it almost starts to feel like the end of a career, and I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with that level of illness, in fact.

Pictures are where this show fails badly. Hockney’s approach to skin color has shifted more towards pointillism over the years, and the result is a group of bodies that appear to be covered in sores. The characters here are all blotchy, red-faced and pockmarked, and streaked pink and red (except for poor John Kasmin who seems to have developed mildew and a bit of gangrene). The figures are closer to fresh corpses than living beings with a pulse and vitality. The triptych of a man in the mirror is a good idea, but he looks like a man waiting for his wife outside the changing rooms at John Lewis. Only the self-portrait here, of Hockney in a wheelchair, really works, and that’s because it’s so vulnerable, but also so funny self-aware.

Upstairs, Hockney continues his iPad experiments with a series of “paintings” of the moon; All dark and moody, large glowing orbs hover over the black landscape. They feel quiet, austere, and maybe a little sad. I won’t hear any complaining about his iPad works – people complain about the lack of texture and brush marks and humanity and yadda yadda yadda, but in my opinion they’re great – an artist who bends new technology to his will, showing that whatever the medium, he still retains all the hallmarks of his aesthetic.

But look, do we really need another Hockney exhibition? There have been more than 10 shows of his work in London in the past eight or nine years alone, not to mention the giant retrospective held at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris earlier this year, and this new exhibition isn’t even the last of it. Serpentine is doing big in 2026 as well. I love Hockney, but even I think enough might be enough.

However, I think we should celebrate it while we can. Here, with all these new works with their oscillation and humor and light and color, he proves that he’s still at it, still got it, after all these years.