This month the sun rises countercyclically at dusk in London's Piccadilly Circus.

Exactly at 8:21 p.m., she carefully peers out from behind a hill on the horizon on Europe's largest digital advertising space before she begins to climb over the fields and stretch her rays like tentacles until the golden light is so blinding that it extinguishes all colors.

Then, as if written in capital letters by a child, the announcement appears: "Do not forget that you cannot look at the sun and death for very long."

Gina Thomas

Features correspondent based in London.

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    The digital sunrise is an animation of images David Hockney drew in his lockdown paradise in France. In autumn 2018, while driving through Normandy, he made the decision to capture the awakening of nature from hibernation in the landscape, which is often referred to as the cradle of Impressionism. Hockney kessly proclaimed that he wanted to teach the French, who had forgotten the craft of painting, to paint Normandy again. No sooner had he settled in an old Norman homestead in the middle of fruit trees and meadows east of Caen than the pandemic came. It gave him the freedom to devote himself entirely to the project with which the Royal Academy is now reopening after more than five months without external interference.Hockney's assistant jokingly speaks of the "Covid Collection".

    Differentiated colors, multi-layered markings

    The show “The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020” comprises one hundred and sixteen images that were created on the iPad in a work frenzy of ninety-five days. Enlarged to 1.40 by 1.05 meters and mounted frameless on aluminum, this frieze-like sequence of exuberant vitality allows the viewer to experience the change in nature as if in fast motion through the artist's ingeniously simplistic eyes. As a restriction, however, it should be noted that the printed images, despite their uplifting luminosity, appear somewhat dull when enlarged, like posters instead of finely structured surfaces. Hockney's models include the Bayeux tapestry, forty minutes away by car, with the embroidered story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066.As with Chinese picture scrolls, what appeals to him about this seventy-meter-long strip of cloth is the lack of shadow and a fixed vanishing point. Instead of fixing the gaze, it is kept flexible through multiple perspectives, so that it guides the viewer through time and space.

    Even at the age of eighty-three, Hockney's enthusiasm for trying out new means to expand his artistic expression has not diminished, as has the cheerfulness that he is now exuding again in the London Royal Academy with his colorful spring cycle.

    Since his first experiments on the iPad, he has had a more sophisticated paint box tailored to his needs.

    The colors are more differentiated, the markings more complex.

    Reflect on seeing and perceiving

    At the beginning of the show, two screens with animated images show how he tries his hand at moving images. When looking out of the window of the rainy landscape, you can even hear the rustling of the rain. Thanks to the technology, it can capture the rapidly changing light reflections without having to wait for the colors to dry. When he saw the moon between hurrying clouds while going to the toilet at night, all he had to do was reach for his backlit device to capture the moment in a way that he judged a far better impression. Because the moon cannot be photographed without special equipment, just like the falling rain. In any case, Hockney considers it “absurd to think that photos provide the ultimate realistic image”."You are a temporary phenomenon on the endless quest to see what the world is like."