David Hockney review: The iPad paintings underwhelm but it’s hard not to be cheered by this show

Melanie McDonough | The Standard | 12th March 2026

Hockney has described the approaching exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry in London as “madness”. At the same time, he has produced a homage to that famous work, a 90m digital work that celebrates the seasons around his Normandy house. One critic calls this work of rolling fields, trees and paths “the masterwork of Hockney’s old age”. Others lament that such iPad images, with their “jolly colours” don’t have “painterly” qualities. “He’s forfeited the materialism of actual paint, that most valuable, tangible element of the process”.