King Charles III, a man who paints watercolours for solace, has anointed David Hockney as a national treasure. The monarchy, that barometer of collective sentiment, has spoken. Hockney, the octogenarian with the swimming pools and the iPhones, is now officially our last great artist. But what does this coronation say about us? What does it reveal about a nation that clings to its cultural heroes like a child to a security blanket? This is not merely a tribute. This is a symptom.
Let us begin with the obvious. Hockney is a giant. His ‘A Bigger Splash’ is an icon of modern art, a masterpiece of colour and light that somehow captures the emptiness of California leisure. His Yorkshire landscapes, painted with an almost religious intensity, remind us of a rural England that is slowly vanishing under concrete and HS2. But to hail him as a national treasure is to admit that British art has become a mausoleum. Where are the new Hockneys? Where are the painters who will define our era as he defined his?
The answer, of course, is nowhere. We live in an age of intellectual decadence, an era where the visual arts have been hijacked by conceptualists who think a banana taped to a wall is a statement. The Turner Prize, once a beacon of radicalism, now feels like a parody of itself. Hockney stands apart because he represents a lost world: a world where craft mattered, where the eye was trusted over the idea, where art was something you could look at without needing a degree in critical theory.
King Charles, a man of genuine if eccentric artistic sensibilities, understands this. His patronage of Hockney is a quiet rebellion against the cultural establishment. But it is also a lament. The King knows, as we all should, that the age of giants is over. We are a nation that reminisces about its past glories because the present offers so little. Compare this to the Victorian era, when Britain produced not just artists but titans of industry, science, and empire. We had Turner and Constable, but we also had Brunel and Darwin. The culture was robust, the spirit confident. Today, we have Hockney and… well, the British Museum’s stolen artifacts.
Let us not forget the irony. Hockney fled to California in the 1960s, escaping the gloom of a Britain that was still rationed and repressed. He found freedom in the sun, in the pools, in the unabashed hedonism of American life. And now, decades later, we reclaim him as our own. How very British: to export our talent, let them thrive elsewhere, and then claim them back once they are old and safe. It is the same story with our actors, our writers, our musicians. We are a nation of bereaved collectors, hoarding the past because we cannot bear the present.
And yet, Hockney’s endurance is a lesson. He never stopped working. He embraced new technologies, from photocopiers to iPads, with the zest of a teenager. At 87, he is still challenging himself, still trying to capture the world in a way that is both fresh and familiar. That is what makes him a giant: not just his talent, but his relentless curiosity. Most artists would rest on their laurels. Hockney dives into the digital deep end. His iPad drawings are not gimmicks; they are the work of a man who refuses to be a relic.
So yes, let the King lead the tributes. Let the nation toast David Hockney. But let us also ask ourselves: who will follow him? Who will be the next Hockney? The silence is deafening. Our culture has become a graveyard of once-great names, and we are the ghostly caretakers, polishing the headstones while the weeds grow thick. If Hockney is our national treasure, it is because we have let everything else decay. The last giant stands alone, and the view is not inspiring. It is a warning.
