Tate Modern museum in London announced its slate of 2027 exhibitions, including an opera-inspired installation by David Hockney in the revered Turbine Hall marking the artist's 90th birthday, Algerian artist Baya's debut U.K. solo show, and the first-ever exhibition devoted entirely to French impressionist Claude Monet since the Tate Modern opened 26 years ago.
Just shy of 300-feet and improbably painted using an iPad, Hockney's frieze winds its way around the outer perimeter of "A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting," on view at Serpentine North through August 23. These nonchalantly referenced "other thoughts," however, are far from just afterthoughts. They comprise 10 new portraits and explorations of abstraction from 2025, a year that evidently saw Hockney busy hatching new experiments on the pictorial plane.
The work represents a 'real turning point' in the artist's development, said Ottilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's London. She noted that the painting's key characteristics, such as constructive perspective, flattened space, and a balance between observation and artifice, would reappear in Hockney's later works, such as his iconic California swimming pools and Yorkshire landscapes.
