David Hockney’s Bayeux Tapestry outburst seals his status as an intellectual revolutionary

Art has long been a form of protest that can inspire millions to the artist’s cause, writes David Lister. Hockney’s latest campaign shows how art can elevate protest far above what politicians can ever hope to achieve

David Hockney’s impassioned protest in The Independent yesterday against the Bayeux Tapestry being moved from its home in Normandy to the British Museum for nine months might seem out of character to those who only associate Britain’s greatest living artist with his vibrant, colourful and life-affirming paintings.

But, in fact, Hockney, who condemned the Bayeux Tapestry move as “madness” which could irreparably damage the work, has been no stranger to protest through his long working life. In the early Sixties, his depictions of gay (as it wasn’t yet called) life were part of the long fight for the legalisation of homosexuality. In the Seventies, he was again ahead of the curve, calling for a relaxation of pub drinking hours.

His impassioned defence of freedom of expression saw him take on the then Labour government’s interference in the Noughties on how children were portrayed in art. He has never been afraid to be out of tune with the spirit of the times.

Hockney is one of art’s true campaigners and intellectuals. And there is no doubting that creative minds can make their causes inspire millions. John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” remains one of the greatest anti-war anthems ever written. Lennon shied away from taking himself too seriously for too long, and when he returned his MBE, he said it was in protest against the war in Biafra and The Beatles’ latest single slipping down the charts. In reality, he was far more concerned to draw attention to the former than the latter.

Lennon’s contemporary Bob Dylan was, in his early years, the best-known protest singer in the world; his songs became the soundtrack to the American civil rights movement. Of course, there is only so much complexity that can be managed in a three-minute pop song. Paul McCartney had the distinction of having a protest record banned by the BBC, but that song, “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”, only dabbled in the turbulent waters of the Troubles.

Hockney is one of art’s true campaigners and intellectuals. And there is no doubting that creative minds can make their causes inspire millions (Getty)

Protest by cultural figures long predates the Sixties generation. Picasso’s epic painting Guernica showed the devastation wreaked upon the town during the Spanish civil war. Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and other First World War poets brought the horrors of the conflict home to the nation at a time when there was no newsreel footage. They are still taught in schools as a way, infinitely more effective than lists of battles, for teaching new generations about that war.

Every art form has its protesters. But the protests will be little more than gimmicks if the art itself is not worthy of the cause. Classic films such as Z, showing the dark side of Greek politics, to Missing (the Chilean junta), to Hotel Rwanda about the genocide in that country, all stay in the memory because they are profoundly moving and thought-provoking films. The power of the cause is not enough if the art itself does not succeed in its own right.

During Joseph Stalin’s tyranny, classical music composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev were lectured by the dictator for not writing the triumphalist music he demanded. Shostakovich’s symphonies instead showed the careful listener hardship and suffering. Stalin himself is thought to have written the editorial in Pravda denouncing the pessimism of classical music.

Theatre has long been a key arena for protest. In Germany, its high priest Bertolt Brecht wrote Mother Courage and Her Children as an anti-war vehicle, and The Threepenny Opera as an anti-capitalist diatribe. It was no accident that, in Britain, a group of playwrights working in the late 1950s was known as the “angry young men”, using the stage to portray the disaffection of the post-war generation with a society that had become stale, class-ridden, and uninspiring to its youth. And their anger still sums up that listless decade as well as any social history. John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger was, on a superficial level, a protest against Anthony Eden’s ill-fated Suez adventure in the death throes of empire. But it was also a howl of frustration from a generation looking for a cause.

Artists like David Hockney, who use both their work and their fame to speak out, perform two great services. They draw attention to the issue at hand, but they also remind us that great artists have an essential place alongside, and often above, politicians in the realm of protest. They, and perhaps only they, can elevate protest to make us question our place in the world and the sort of world we want to be a part of.