Exhibitions

The problem with exhibiting costumes is well known. Should the mannequins be lifelike with human features, or faceless? What about trying a more surreal approach with Perspex or metals? This show of her late Majesty’s wardrobe opts for something more ghostly: hundreds of shoulderless, neckless, wristless, legless figures, floating magically in space, presented in cases at eye level, with others, higher, in serried ranks, like some gorgeously arrayed terracotta army. The unifying factor is that instantly recognizable royal silhouette – from the youthful wasp waist to the later fuller frame.

When so much contemporary art is riven with obscurity and angst, it is disorienting, at first, to encounter something as straightforwardly enjoyable as Hockney’s latest exhibition. Aged 88, the artist went out into his garden in Normandy with his iPad to make a visual diary of the year 2020. A hundred or so of the iPad sketches he made have been put together here, blended into a frieze, a walk-through panorama of the seasons rendered with Vivaldi-like virtuosity. As we move along the curve of this 90-meter frieze, we see nature through Hockney’s bright yellow spectacles. He distills the garden to its dramatic essences. The chill mist of winter is numinous, the dormant trees skeletal, the spring blossom riotously delicate, the blue sky bluer than blue.