A new exhibition at Tate Britain celebrates David Hockney as a revolutionary who painted ‘peaceful, gay paradise’ in an era when homosexuality was a criminal offence. For the working class, however, the price of that freedom was steep: it was the privilege of the rich.
The show, ‘David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring’, opens tomorrow. It traces the artist’s escape from Bradford’s mill towns to the sun-drenched pools of California. Hockney’s early works, like ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’, depict tender male intimacy at a time when the Wolfenden Report had only just recommended decriminalisation. Yet for the miners, factory hands, and dockers of Hockney’s hometown, the reality was different.
“Hockney could afford to be bold because he had money and connections,” says Dr. Eleanor Briggs, historian of working-class culture at Manchester University. “For a lad on the shop floor, being caught with another man meant losing your job, your home, your family. The ‘gay paradise’ was a middle-class dream.”
Indeed, while Hockney sipped champagne in Los Angeles, back in Bradford the courts were still prosecuting men under the Sexual Offences Act 1956. In 1965, the year Hockney painted ‘A Bigger Splash’, 500 men were imprisoned for consenting same-sex acts in the UK. The majority were working class, unable to afford the private lawyers or discreet surgeries that shielded the elite.
The exhibition’s curator, James Cahill, defends Hockney’s legacy: “His art was a form of activism. By showing love and desire openly, he helped change public attitudes. That benefit rippled down to everyone.” But the museum’s own figures show only 12% of visitors come from lower socio-economic groups. The ticket price of £22 is a barrier. For a family on Universal Credit, that’s a week’s food budget.
Meanwhile, the union behind the Tate’s own cleaners is balloting for strike action over pay. “It’s ironic,” says Martha Green, a cleaner at the gallery for 14 years. “They celebrate a man who fought for his freedom, but the people who sweep the floors can’t afford to see his work. The real paradise is when everyone can live without fear and without hunger.”
The exhibition includes Hockney’s recent iPad drawings of the Yorkshire Wolds, a return to his roots. But the landscape he paints is one of empty, rolling hills. The mills that once employed his father are gone. The jobs, the communities, the solidarity that defined the North have been erased. “Hockney’s gay paradise was also a capitalist paradise,” says Briggs. “He escaped the factory, but he never painted the people left behind.”
Today, as the government debates conversion therapy bans and hate crime legislation, the economic divide remains stark. Gay men in London have a median income of £42,000, while in the North it is £26,000. The ‘peaceful paradise’ Hockney depicted is not available to all.
Yet his art still resonates. In the exhibition’s final room, a huge canvas of two men kissing is bathed in golden light. A school group from a working-class estate in Hackney stand before it. One boy whispers, “They look happy.” For a moment, the art transcends class. But outside, the rain falls on London’s streets, and the cleaners are planning their next rally.
Hockney’s legacy is complicated. He gave the world a vision of gay joy. But that vision was bought with the currency of privilege. As the Tate prepares for strikes, one can only wonder: what would Hockney paint today? A living wage demonstration, perhaps? Or another shimmering pool, with a body floating, forever out of reach.
