Taken singly, some of David Hockney’s best-known paintings are physically unrewarding, but their imagery remains as plangent as a golden oldie. This Northerner’s take on Frenchified taste (he is the Paul Helleu of ’70s Euro-chic café society) and California lifestyle mixes shrewd-eyed innocence with mischievous sophistication. Some of the visual experiments of recent years have been blind alleys, and the straightforward paintings of “things we have loved”—dogs, Mum, flowers, etc.—are at best charmingly banal. But if the curators of this 100-piece overview land the right works, we could be surprised by the consistency of Hockney’s visual acrobatics.
