Barnett Newman had a famous quote that the impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty which was considered bourgeois or tacky.

But, again and again, by showing up for Elton John and not just for the ballet, or by taking her sons away from the hunting preserve of Balmoral to careen down a waterslide at a tacky amusement park, she told ordinary Britons that their world was as important as any other. She told them that she wanted to know them, and that she wanted her sons to know them, too.