HOCKNEY, HIGH PRIEST OF THE AZURE POOL

For forty years, we have been endlessly told that David Hockney is the last great living painter. A sort of chromatic prophet descending from Yorkshire with a palette of candy colors to save Western art from its melancholy. But what, after all, are we contemplating in those famous swimming pools that have become universal icons? Immaculate blue water, trouble-free sunshine, dream villas, tanned bodies. All with the metaphysical depth of a luxury real estate catalog. Like Iris Apfel, they even share the same glasses. Hockney did not so much paint California as manufacture its logo. He transformed the fantasy of bourgeois success, Kardashian-style, into cultural wallpaper for wealthy apartments.

One does not look at his paintings; one settles into them as if entering an air-conditioned waiting room. And that is precisely why The Lord adored him. Hockney decorated the world the way others choose J’Adior curtains for their living rooms. In his work, everything is clean, tidy, polished, and neatly pressed. Even the light seems to have come straight from the dry cleaner. One searches for roughness, doubt, accident, the sweat of a painter wrestling with his materials. Instead, one finds the perfection of a travel brochure, the aesthetic of a model second home prepared for prospective buyers.

Then came his digital period, imitating Andy Warhol, welcomed by critics with the solemnity of defrocked priests discovering a new relic. Toward a world where painting becomes a file, where the gesture is reduced to a caress across an iPad’s tempered glass, where the artwork arrives already prepared to be printed on mugs or scarves. Since Lascaux, artists had struggled against matter itself. Hockney, meanwhile, found a way to eliminate it. What progress! Painting once possessed the thickness of earth and oil, the smell of turpentine and accumulated time. With Hockney, even the tragedy of the gesture disappears, leaving behind an image that is perfectly exportable, perfectly marketable, perfectly compatible with the museum gift shop. As for the portraits, the ultimate refuge of the master’s defenders, they undeniably possess elegance.

Everything is in its proper place, and the sitters seem condemned to an eternity of good manners. One admires the composition as one admires a perfectly arranged shop window. But where is the vertigo? Even the soul itself appears to have been given instructions on how to behave. Ultimately, his immense success may tell us less about the story of a genius than about the story of an era. An era that prefers images to painting, reproduction to experience, communication to creation, comfort to disturbance. Hockney is the ideal artist for a world that wants color without risk, art without discomfort, prestige without difficulty. He has become the great painter of a civilization that sometimes mistakes a masterpiece for an exceptionally successful wallpaper or screensaver.

And that is precisely why he triumphs. Because he almost never unsettles. Because he is immediately likable. Because he transforms culture into a smiling luxury product. In short, David Hockney may well be the greatest decorator of our time. Whether he is the greatest living painter remains an open question. But one thing is certain: if the history of art were ever replaced by a chain of five-star hotels, he would undoubtedly be its patron saint.

Canal Luxe

The best Fashion Outsiders have been grouped in this Fashion blog and several independent journalists write without any compromission on Fashion

HOCKNEY, HIGH PRIEST OF THE AZURE POOL