David Hockney, the painter who turned swimming pools into psychedelic cathedrals and who made the Yorkshire Wolds look like a lost Eden, has been laid to rest. The funeral, by all accounts, was low-key. No state procession. No televised weeping from celebrities. Just a quiet affair for a man whose celebrity often eclipsed his craft.
And yet, global tributes poured in as if the man had been a head of state. The irony is rich. We live in an age of hyperbole, where every minor artist is a ‘genius’ and every mediocre film a ‘masterpiece’. But Hockney? He was the real thing. He revived figurative painting when it was declared dead. He made acrylics sing. And he did it all with a puckish grin and a refusal to take himself too seriously.
His funeral’s modesty is a stark contrast to the outsized mourning of our era. Recall the hysterics over David Bowie’s death: the Instagram posts, the tears, the assumption that grief is a public performance. Hockney’s farewell feels like a quiet rebellion against that. A reminder that dignity is not dead.
Of course, the tributes will continue. The obituaries will call him ‘the greatest living British painter’. They will mention his swimming pools, his double portraits, his experiments with iPads. But the real legacy is his defiance. He refused to bow to the market or the critics. He painted what he wanted, how he wanted. And he lived long enough to see his detractors fade into irrelevance.
There is a lesson here for the national conversation. We have become obsessed with monumentality. Every poet must be a ‘national treasure’. Every musician must be a ‘legend’. We have lost the art of the quiet genius. Hockney’s low-key funeral is a mirror held up to our own excesses. It says: greatness does not require a parade.
Let us hope that his restraint catches on. Let us hope we can mourn without hysteria, celebrate without hyperbole. If Hockney taught us anything, it is that colour speaks louder than noise.