Let us pause, reader, for a moment of genuine civic theatre. Our dear King has led the national tributes to David Hockney, that ‘giant of the art world’, following a landmark exhibition. The BBC informs us he was a “colossus” of colour, a painter of “sun-drenched” pools and “crisp” Californian light. All true, of course. But as we genuflect before this sepia-toned shrine, permit me to vomit a little heresy onto the polished floor of our collective memory.
For what, precisely, does Hockney represent? Not the triumph of vision, but the apotheosis of the decorative. He is the artistic equivalent of a well-chosen throw pillow: pleasant, charming, deeply inoffensive. His pools, his lovers, his double-portraits of collectors in tailored suits. They whisper, not shout. They soothe, not challenge. In a century where art has been defined by its ability to provoke, shock, or disturb, Hockney offers a comforting retreat into the merely beautiful. This is the art of the late empire, the age of the Patron-Saint of Comfortable Modernity.
Consider the contrast. When Picasso painted Guernica, he captured the horror of industrial warfare. When Matisse painted his dancers, he captured an ecstasy of movement that still feels radical. Hockney paints his swimming pools, and we smile. We note the clever perspective, the pastel harmonies. But do we feel? Do we recoil, or wonder, or question our own existence? No. We feel the gentle satisfaction of a warm bath. This is not art as a window onto the human condition. This is art as a mirror, reflecting our own bourgeois contentment back at us.
And so the tributes arrive. The King, ever the custodian of taste, leads the chorus. The gallery directors, the cultural commentators, the donors. They praise his “dedication” to craft, his “innovative” use of the iPad, his “joyful” engagement with colour. This is the language of the modern curator. It is a language of features, of technical achievements, of marketable biography. It says more about our own hunger for an unproblematic hero than it does about Hockney’s actual legacy.
Perhaps I am being too hard. Hockney was, after all, a master of line. His drawings of figures are taut and elegant. His theatrical sets have a stunning clarity. And yes, his swimming pools have a undeniable, if slightly sterile, beauty. But we must ask ourselves: why, in an age of deep aesthetic crisis, do we elevate the pleasant over the profound? Why do we crown a giant who, for all his gifts, never once made us uncomfortable?
The answer, I suspect, lies in our own intellectual decadence. We have, as a culture, lost the stomach for the difficult. We prefer our art to confirm our biases, to decorate our homes, to serve as a backdrop for our Instagrammed lives. Hockney, the consummate professional, gave us exactly that. He is the perfect artist for a nation that no longer remembers how to be truly moved.
So mourn, by all means. Applaud the gracious tribute from the throne. But let us also recognise that Hockney’s reign marks the quiet end of something. The end of art as danger, as prophecy, as revelation. We have traded the Dionysian frenzy for a chlorinated pool. And we call it genius.
I will withhold my tears. There are too many real ones to be shed.
