Democracy In Portraiture: New Paintings from David Hockney

David Hockney is prolific to the point of loquacity and vigorously experimental. At 79, his work ethic remains stupendous.

In the past decade there have been giant watercolours, outsize landscapes, digital portraits and pictures made using lasers, photocopiers, collages and iPads. And now there are portraits once more – 82 of them, each completed in three six-hour bursts – worked this time in old-fashioned acrylic paint.

The pictures appear in close array – and identical format – one after the other like vast football cards all through the Sackler wing of the Royal Academy. A man in fawn chinos and lemon jersey, another in a charcoal suit and chestnut brogues, a third in striped trousers and suede sneakers: each is himself (and occasionally herself) but conspicuously part of a series. This is emphasized by the uniform setting: an empty studio production that varies only in its alternation of brilliant blue or green floor and backdrop. Read more at The Guardian.