David Hockney, who has finally downed his brushes at the age of 88, spent a long lifetime proving that provincial origins were no barrier to swimming in the shallow end of international glamour. Born in Bradford in 1937, he emerged from the woolly north like a splash of primary colour in a sepia photograph, destined to make the art world look at itself in the mirror and wonder why it had bothered getting dressed.
Hockney’s early work announced him as one of the brighter sparks of British Pop Art, though he was always too interested in actual draughtsmanship to be mistaken for a mere ironist. While others were busy silkscreening soup cans, he painted boys, swimming pools, and the occasional double portrait that suggested domesticity might be tolerable if the lighting was right. A Bigger Splash (1967) captured the essence of Californian hedonism: all surface, no regret, the perfect metaphor for a man who understood that life, like acrylic paint, looks better when it dries quickly. He decamped to Los Angeles in the Sixties and stayed long enough to make the place seem almost cultured, commuting between palm trees and the damp moors of Yorkshire with the cheerful inconsistency of a man who refused to be pinned down by geography or critical theory.
His portraits were mercilessly accurate without ever quite becoming cruel, a rare achievement in an age when most figurative painters were either sentimental or sneering. He drew his mother with the tender exasperation of a son who knows exactly how many times she has asked about the central heating. Later, he embraced technology with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a retiree discovering emojis, producing iPad drawings that somehow made the tablet look like a serious artistic tool rather than an expensive distraction. The art market, never slow to recognise a living legend with a decent PR sense, rewarded him handsomely: Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) fetched $90 million in 2018, proving that even in late capitalism, a well-placed diving board retains its value.
Hockney chain-smoked, wore loud jackets, and maintained the air of a mildly amused provincial who had somehow conquered the world without ever quite believing it mattered. He designed opera sets, argued about perspective with the ghosts of the Renaissance, and painted vast Yorkshire landscapes that made the English countryside look almost as vivid as his Californian fantasies. Through it all he retained the air of a man who had gate-crashed the party of modernism and decided to rearrange the furniture.
In an era of conceptual fog and performative despair, Hockney simply kept looking and kept painting. The results were frequently beautiful, occasionally repetitive, and never boring. He leaves behind a body of work that suggests pleasure is not the enemy of seriousness, and that even the most sophisticated eye might occasionally enjoy a decent view. The art world, which he both charmed and quietly mocked, will miss him more than it cares to admit.