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He’s still at it, the celebrated painter. At 88 years old, with over six decades of professional experience which has propelled him to the pinnacle of the contemporary art pile, Hockney is still painting, constantly exploring, persistently inventing, and regularly exhibiting his work.

A Glimpse into the Exhibition

This exhibition – debuting in a prestigious central London venue for his long-term gallery, which has represented him for decades – is packed with paintings that feel freshly completed. The opening room is all eye-searingly bright still lifes: chairs, tables, fruit and flowers. While the themes are traditional and conventional, Hockney’s approach is never boring, is it?

His Van Gogh-y wicker chairs are neon yellow and luminous purple; his floors are clashing compositions of red, yellow and orange shapes; his fruit is all primary and basic and childlike. Throughout, he toys with what he calls “reverse perspective”, an attempt to replicate how we actually see the world, rather than the fixed perspective we get in photographs and other paintings. Thus, everything appears unstable and distorted. His chair legs splay, his tablecloths warp. I don’t think it’s any closer to “real” perspective compared to conventional techniques, but the woozy visual discomfort it creates is engaging and amusing. Garden images are incorporated into certain pieces – little glimpses of a somewhat dull English reality that enhance the vividness and cheerfulness of the overall artwork.

His work is always intriguing … Delphiniums on My Garden Table, 13 July 2025.

Changes in Artistic Technique

What is unmistakable is the increased tremor in the brushstrokes than they used to be. Traditional Hockney pieces are confident, so in command of his paintbrush, yet these latest creations are surprisingly erratic. The strokes are filled with shakes and vibrations, the lines are all over the shop, bits of white underpainting poke out everywhere. They’re almost a mess, but still immediately, uniquely and recognisably him. This creates a deeply moving and poignant encounter – we observe a legendary artist aging through his art. Contrast this with his initial pieces on display in another show from several months ago and it evokes the sense of a career’s beginning and end, and the somber reality is somewhat difficult to accept, actually.

Portraits: A Mixed Reception

The portrait section is the most controversial aspect. His method for depicting skin has shifted toward a pointillist style in recent times and the result is a bunch of bodies that appear afflicted with blemishes. Every subject is patchy, red-faced and pockmarked, splodged with pink and red with the exception of one individual who seems to have gone a bit mouldy and gangrenous. The figures are closer to fresh corpses than living beings with heartbeats and vitality. A three-panel mirror portrait is a good idea, but he just looks like a bloke uncomfortably poised in a mundane setting. Solely the self-representation showing Hockney painting in a wheelchair really works, and that’s because it’s so vulnerable, but also so funnily self-aware.

Quiet and austere … a piece from early 2020.

Experiments with Technology

On the upper level, Hockney continues his iPad experiments featuring lunar artworks; predominantly somber and atmospheric, big glowing orbs hovering above blackened landscapes. They feel quiet, austere, maybe a little sad. Criticisms of his digital art are unfounded – people complain about the lack of texture and brush marks and humanity and yadda yadda yadda, but to my mind they’re great – an artist bending new technology to his will, showing that whatever the medium, he preserves his distinctive artistic identity.

Debating Artistic Output

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

And yet, I guess we should celebrate him while we can. Here, through these recent pieces with their wobbles and humour and light and color, he’s just proving that he’s still at it, and he’s still got it, decades into his career.