Natasha Kurchnova reviews David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring at Pace Gallery, New York, on view through November 1, 2014.

Kurchnova writes: "Hockney is a painters’ painter – he openly insists on the superiority of painting over photography in the truthfulness with which it renders the world. Photography, for him, is limited by a particular point of view and can always be manipulated, especially in the digital age. Interestingly, with all his love of nature, drawing and painting, and his dislike of photography as art, Hockney is an avowed technophile, who, in order to approach nature, uses a variety of mechanical devices of different degrees of complexity… Initially, a series of 13 large colour prints at the exhibition were also drawings done on an iPad… The series is remarkable for its bold, iridescent colouration and an almost eerie luminosity, which seems to emanate from the surface of the prints. Apart from these distinctive features, conditioned by the technical device itself, the prints also convey the artist’s thorough knowledge of modern masters. The squiggly, nervous lines demarcating the branches, grass and road charge the surface with energy and dynamism worthy of the best canvases of Van Gogh and Munch."