David Hockney, that great Yorkshireman of primary colours and swimming pools, has been laid to rest in a low-key funeral. The British art world, always eager to canonise its own, has duly poured in tributes. And so the curtain falls on a figure who embodied a peculiar kind of British modernism: cheerful, technically brilliant, but ultimately a symptom of the intellectual decadence that has hollowed out our cultural institutions.
Hockney was the last of a breed, an artist who understood that craft matters more than concept. Yet his death passes with barely a ripple in a public sphere obsessed with celebrities who have never held a brush. The irony is bitter.
Hockney, who spent his career arguing for the importance of skill against the barbarians of conceptual art, is mourned by the very art establishment that has abandoned his principles. Their tributes ring hollow. They praise his ‘colour’ and ‘joy’ but ignore the lesson: when the technical foundations of art are discarded, the whole edifice crumbles.
Hockney’s low-key funeral is a fitting end for a man who despised the vulgarity of fame. But it is also a symbol of our age: the truly great depart without fanfare, while the mediocre shout from every gallery. Compare this to the monumental state funerals of Victorian painters like Lord Leighton.
Then, a nation mourned an artist as a civic hero. Now, we scrawl a few lines on Twitter and move on. Hockney’s death should make us ask: who will follow him?
Who will champion the craft of seeing in an era of screens and slogans? The answer, I fear, is no one. We are left with a culture that prefers the shallow end of the pool.
Hockney painted the deep end, but we lack the nerve to dive in.