It was a moment of rare, unscripted national unity. Sir David Hockney, the boy from Bradford who painted the swimming pools of California, stood in the gilded hall of Windsor Castle as the King himself placed the Order of Merit around his neck. But this wasn’t just a ceremony: it was a cultural referendum. At 87, with his flat cap, thick glasses and the bonhomie of a working-class lad made good, Hockney embodies something Britain is still trying to define for itself: what does it mean to be a truly great British artist in the 21st century?
The Order of Merit, restricted to 24 living recipients and chosen personally by the monarch, is the highest honour a sovereign can bestow. It’s a wink to the establishment, a quiet acknowledgement that art matters. But for Hockney, whose career spans six decades and includes everything from intimate portraits of friends to vast Yorkshire landscapes painted on an iPad, the honour feels less like a coronation and more like a homecoming. He never really left. Even during the hedonistic 1970s in Los Angeles, his palette was always drenched in the dappled light of an English summer.
And what of the reaction on the street? In the cafes of his hometown, where I wandered this afternoon, the mood was one of quiet pride. “He’s one of us,” said a man behind the counter at Salts Mill, the converted textile factory that now houses a permanent Hockney gallery. “He never forgot where he came from.” That’s the trick, isn’t it? To be both a genius and an everyman. Hockney has managed it with the sort of ease that makes the rest of us suspect he’s in on a joke we’re not quite getting.
The ceremony itself was, by all accounts, charmingly informal. The King, a known watercolourist, reportedly quizzed Hockney about his technique. Imagine that: the sovereign asking the artist how he does it. It speaks to a subtle shift in the relationship between the monarchy and the arts. No longer just patrons, they are now students.
But let’s not be too starry-eyed. The honour is also a reminder of the yawning chasm between how we celebrate artists and how we support them. Hockney is a billionaire, but the average British artist earns less than £20,000 a year. The art schools that produced him are being hollowed out. The funding for local galleries is drying up. As the King pinned on the medal, he was also, whether he intended to or not, highlighting a paradox: we venerate our icons while starving the ecosystem that produces them.
Still, for one afternoon, the nation paused. In the pub, on the bus, in the queue at the supermarket, people talked about art. A man in a hi-vis jacket told me, “He’s a legend, isn’t he? I don’t get the splotches, but I get the feeling.” And that, perhaps, is Hockney’s greatest achievement. He makes you believe that you can get it. He democratises the sublime.
The King, by bestowing this honour, has done more than reward a lifetime of work. He has signalled that in a nation wrestling with its post-imperial identity, art remains the one language we all speak. Hockney, with his Bradford vowels and his endless curiosity, is the translator. And this moment, fragile and fleeting, is proof that some things are still worth preserving.
