Buckingham Palace, London. In a ceremony that experts are calling 'the most British thing to happen since the invention of queueing for a queue,' King Charles III has officially branded David Hockney a 'giant of British art.' The tribute, delivered with the solemnity of a man reading a eulogy for a favourite corgi, took place at a private reception where the air was thick with the smell of gin, acrylics, and existential dread.
Let us pause to consider the sheer absurdity of a monarch, a man whose job description includes 'divine right to wear a funny hat,' declaring an 87-year-old Yorkshireman in oversized glasses a 'giant.' It is as if the Queen herself had popped down to the local Wetherspoons to knight a particularly aggressive pigeon. But no, this is 2024, and our King is a man who talks to plants. The bar for 'giant' has clearly been lowered to accommodate the new normal.
Hockney, for the uninitiated, is the man who painted swimming pools that look like they were designed by a colour-blind robot on LSD. He is the poet laureate of the swimming trunk, the Michelangelo of the poolside selfie. And now, he has the seal of approval from a man who once wrote a children's book about a lonely hedgehog. It is a match made in the fevered imagination of a mid-tier BBC drama.
The King's tribute, delivered with the gravitas of a man reading a shopping list aloud, included the phrase 'giant of British art.' Let us dissect this. 'Giant.' A being of immense size and power, from myth and legend. Hockney is a man who once painted a picture of a splash. A splash! And now he is a giant. By this logic, I am a 'colossus of British journalism' for once writing a mildly amusing caption for a photograph of a cat wearing a monocle. The bar is not just low; it is subterranean.
But let us not be churlish. Hockney's contribution to art is undeniable. He has been painting since the days when men wore fishnet stockings and talked about 'the counterculture' without irony. He captured the essence of California sunshine, the shimmer of water, and the peculiar loneliness of the human condition, all while wearing a cravat. He is a giant, in the sense that he towers over a field of contemporary art that includes things like 'a pile of dirt in a gallery' and 'a video of a banana duct-taped to a wall.'
The ceremony itself was a masterclass in British awkwardness. Imagine two men, one in a suit that costs more than your flat, the other in a jacket that looks like it was knitted from the fur of an endangered species, standing in a room full of people pretending not to stare. The King made a speech. Hockney made a series of hand gestures that might have been a thank you or might have been a plea for a gin and tonic. No one was sure.
And so, David Hockney joins the pantheon of British giants: Shakespeare, Churchill, Bowie, and now a man who once painted a dog from the front and the back in the same picture. It is a fitting tribute to a nation that gave the world the adjective 'barmy.' The King has spoken. The art world has nodded sagely. And somewhere, a painting of a splash has grown a little taller.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go measure my own height in metaphorical terms. I believe I am currently a 'leprechaun of minor accomplishments.'
