Just how much of a wanker is Damien Hirst?

what about all those Hollywood blockbusters? not REAL art?

the skull sounds 'cool', but i can't help thinking he could be doing something a lot more useful with that money. if, somehow, it ends up generating more money than it cost for it to be made, perhaps something more useful will be done with that, but i'm pessimistic.

they're all wankers, as with the pop stars.

Praps you should start said discourse.

At the time there was plenty of discussion of it and not just the shock horror aspect of it.

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:9Jb9tRve_nbviM:media.urbandictionary.com/image/large/grill-42999.jpg

im also v. fond of the kitsch sumptiousness (sp) of the spin paintings, and the cool chemical rigour of the dot paintings.

he hasnt done anything ive liked in at least 5 yrs, adn well this doesnt really improve the situtation

I read something funny in a detective novel. 'I know a lot about art, but I don't know what I like.'

NB: I didn't say objective, I said less subjective. A little.

anthony easton in pure rockism shockah!!!

So there you go.

(Also, I know nothing about art, blah di blah, but I went to an exhibition of his at the Saatchi gallery and thought it was quite good.)

he shouldn't have said any of this

but unless you have actually seen the pieces up close in a gallery, you won't get it.

it's interesting how this 'restricts' the work to the level of films and indeed books. if you have to see the film or read the book to really understand it so you must see an exhibit 'in the flesh' but what there is to understand (if anything) is far more ambiguous generally than with film. but the idea of 'getting it' implies there is a definite intention/message that is to be understood. if that message is not understood by the viewer, they will often blame the artist rather than themselves. then there's the issue of how 'valuable' an artist like Hirst's messages really are...

he shouldn't have said any of this

why not? sounds like his genuine belief, with the latter remark just being a joke. if you think he is wrong about the grotesque element as requisite for art to work then i'm inclined to agree.

perhaps he should've said 'I need that grotesque element for it to work as MY piece of art.'

i think music is always different because it's a not a physical/visual medium. but saying that about a band seems silly (different from 'they're much better live' tho this is also often a given esp. for rock bands).

of course, the button itself is soooo 1996

I would say that if you claim to 'get' a film you haven't seen or a book you haven't read then it's totally fair to call PRETENTIOUS on that shit. Do your homework at least!

I think Hirst needs the grotesque because it says HEY LOOKY and he is a bit like that in personality (which is why he hangs out with Keith Allen - ick -and plays with his knob in photos). Hirst's work which is made for the gallery is to be seen in a gallery setting. The spots are for rich people's walls and are made by assistants. However, if you were in the right spot in 1994 your spin art from Fete Worse Than Death is worth considerably more than the 50p you paid for it. He's an important artist whether you like it or not, and that decision was made not by any dealer or collector or curator but by Hirst himself, if you look at the work he was doing even at Goldsmiths.

I like this!

Er, wait. (This therefore means I am an important figure in the realm of laziness and timewasting, having decided I was brilliant at both.)

Tracer: hahahahaha - it's probably the site of Ye Olde Spinne Arte Boothe.

Found it!

Rich, I know what you mean about the first half of the sentence, but it sounds like an off-the-cuff remark; however, the second half of the sentence is terrific: "God is in the details and all that".

None of it really has any meaning for me, but I love it. I don't feel like I need it to have a meaning. Could this be a mark of failure? No.

hirst is an important huge dollar-bill stinky storage room, pink from blowing, about to burst, like liliput inverted...

no wonder his skull looks shrunkn' swarovsky

that's probably going to be my favorite sentence for the next 50 years.
if i ever have the opportunity to meet an alien from outer space, it is
certainly the first thing i will say to it.

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/Image-Library/Mapplethorpe/Memento-mori-pendant_to_rosary-1500-DIA.jpg
ivory, rosary pendant, ca 1500

Mmm, skulls:

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/SHOWBIZ/06/01/skull.art.reut/story.skull.gi.jpg

If I was worth $98M I'd be grinning too.

I think it's great.

And I'm surprised so many posters took this statment,

'I just want to celebrate life by saying to hell with death,' said the artist, 'What better way of saying that than by taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence? The only part of the original skull that will remain will be the teeth. You need that grotesque element for it to work as a piece of art. God is in the details and all that.'

at face value

"I hope this work gives people hope -- uplifting, take your breath away," he said in response to a question on what he expected the public to get from the skull.

I mean come on, the thing is terrifying.

I think it looks like a happy disco skull 8D

Same here.

I think it's amazing. Thanks for posting. I've been waiting to see this since I heard it was happening. I thought he'd forgotten about it.

Hirst's greatest contribution to the world since "Naughty Christmas (Goblin In The Office)".

much much bigger version at the daily dish that I was trying to find a funny place to post but I suppose "pertinent" will have to do:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/images/2007/06/01/hirstskullgetty.jpg

I think it's completely amazing, it doesn't even seem real

Those teeth are in really good nick for an 18th century dude.

suspect they may have been bleached etc. also he probably died before they could get really bad

I assumed they'd been cleaned, yeah, but I'm amazed he'd only lost one and the rest of them don't look too rotten.

i like it guys, oddly fascinating.

I tend to love this guy's stuff.

me, not so much. maybe sometimes. this one, yes.

it would be fun to hold.

toss

it would be fun to use as a McGuffin in a three-hour heist movie

SOMEBODY RECOMMEND ME AN AGENT

use as bowling ball

centerpiece at seances

light fixture, bulb in the brain, dreamcatchers hanging from teeth

desktop wallpaper

cover of LCD soundsystem's 3rd album

President

leonardo dicaprio's character in blood diamonds 2

Alas, rich Yorik, I didn't know him at all, Horatio :-(

if only its jaw moved, the best ventriloquist dummy ever

http://scoopsnoodle.com/adam_schefter/snorg7.jpg

shit is dope

though: i saw a bit of damien hirst's private collection at the serpentine this winter, and there were a bunch of crazy ass decorated skulls in it by an other artist? they were also pretty fantastic

brtrps: KUDOS

not a fan of hirst

Paul Wall, your Ice-Grill SUCKS!

dude's got an ice FACE

yah really step up yr game bro

takin rock'n'roll to another level, iced out skull heads

The skull was bought from a taxidermy shop called Get Stuffed.

"I hope this work gives people hope -- uplifting, take your breath away," he said in response to a question on what he expected the public to get from the skull.

I mean come on, the thing is terrifying. HIGH-LARIOUS!!!!!!

-- Hurting 2, Friday, June 1, 2007 9:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

fixed

Well it's both

Putting diamonds on the inside of the eye-sockets too was a bright move

wasn't it ilxor n/a who made this thread?

nick for real you should remember to patent shit when you have ideas like that.

a newspaper in new zealand stole it from him

http://www.toyarchive.com/STAForSale/NEW2001+/GiJoe/MOSC/ChinaDestroMOSC1a.jpg

but srsly one of the cool things abt this skull is that hirst leveraged his fame to make something an ordinary person couldnt.

so is this made of blood diamonds or what.

i don't know, it's kind of ugly. i think he's lazy in the way he executes his ideas at this point. he's taking a couple of really vague symbols and mixing them to achieve an emotional effect, but he's doing it so clumsily that i don't even think he cares what he communicates or people get from it anymore.

i get about as much from this as i would from the printed or spoken words "a skull covered in diamonds".

No, it's not made with blood diamonds, that's one thing he insisted on and made sure were sourced appropriately. I don't know the guy enough to call wanker on him, but I know he's done some nice things for other friends which alleviate the potential for wankery which is so obviously there.

Ran into one of my artworld stately homo friends last night, who said he'd boycotted the opening and now heard that there had been these really OTT goodie bags handed out to the celebrity art tourists who did go. Despite these being rammed full of luxury goods he did not regret his decision in the least because the work and whole phenomenon of Damien bling was large steaming pile of wank.

There was a pic of it in the Guardian. It's pretty and sparkley. But then again, I heart Damien Hirst and probably always will. He amuses me.

ifam and enrq and, probably, art fag OTM

hoxton square was MENTAL yesterday, polis at each of the entrances, HUGE queue of ppl outside white cube, we went and had nummy vietmanese.

the nosenight review thing with kirsy interviewing him for 25 minutes was ok, although he just didn't answer some of the more interesting questions, which was a shame.

he stands to make a £35m profit on this, so i guess i shouldn't be churlish: you can't deny the numbers.

more of a fanny than a wanker

I thoughtlessly dismissed him as a charlatan before I actually went to see some of his work. I don't know if the formaldahyde thigies are 'art' (whatever that may mean), but they certainly are very interesting to look at.

well and good, but have you tried this place?

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

Yes, and you can't see inside the animals in the same way there.

this looks like the tacky stoner ornaments you get at herbal high shops

I admit I like this little photo:

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/ww/news/2007/06/03/hirstbig.jpg

It's interesting to watch the head-on collision of Hirst hatery with Bling hatery. It's a brand new flavor of Haterade Fusion Splash.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/rt_hirst_skull_070601_ms.jpg

It's called "For the love of God." I mean how great is that?

Title = what Hirst's mother said when he described the idea to her.

No, it's not made with blood diamonds, that's one thing he insisted on and made sure were sourced appropriately. I don't know the guy enough to call wanker on him, but I know he's done some nice things for other friends which alleviate the potential for wankery which is so obviously there.

Ran into one of my artworld stately homo friends last night, who said he'd boycotted the opening and now heard that there had been these really OTT goodie bags handed out to the celebrity art tourists who did go. Despite these being rammed full of luxury goods he did not regret his decision in the least because the work and whole phenomenon of Damien bling was large steaming pile of wank.

-- suzy, Sunday, June 3, 2007 5:59 AM (Yesterday)

^ speaking of "wank"

Go felch yourself.

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/ww/news/2007/06/03/hirstbig.jpg

this photo is an homage to a snapshot of hirst as a teenager at a morgue with a severed head. it's in the interview book he did with gordon burns.

it's part of why i think he's lazy. if he wants to work with a lifelong fascination with death, all the more power to him, but please try harder.

xxpost - starfelcher

I've more than earned the right not to be called that by cowardly anonymous types. There are about half a dozen ilxors who are capable of curating or chairing contemporary art events and most long-term posters know it (and who they are).

It was weird, reading in Obs this weekend to consider just how much he ripped off Koons vitrines with basketballs etc. Me: 'oh shit yes of course!' Not to mention Sigmar Polke dots. Hirst is a very keen recycler of ideas but I don't like this one unless it's read as a totem of 'too much bling will be the death of contemporary art'.

suzy don't get ruffled, am0n is a notorious hit-n-run lamestain with next to nothing to actually say about anything, as far as i can tell.

Haha I won't; I'm just a bit grim with deadlines.

wow ^ cap'n save a britishish jerk

whatever am0n

suzy isn't british duh

JW is a noted authority on sexism, jerks

and of course phpbb

i have noticed am0n pulling this kind of bullshit drive-by baiting many times before and frankly if he were funnier i doubt i'd care.

also he bumped a load of threads on MRB with imgspam. phew what a loony.

am0n and jw aren't the same person, btw

i know

although i did used to think ghost rider was you!

How come we don't have an admin log?

but i am ghost rider!

we are all ghost rider

What was sexist, TOM?

im not ghost rider anymore, i havent been for a while

the weird thing abuot that imagespam was the fact that its also on holloway road

in-joke

I was ghost rider but it turns out there are drugs for that now.

I'm not Tom but the whole cap'n-save-a-ho concept is fuelled by misogyny, no? Is it just a fortnight up to my eyeballs in politicised art that makes me think this

http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/kruger_men.jpg

when random noobs attack?

see, i just put a bucket of cold water over my head

someone photoshop a flaming hirst skull

how dare you make fun of me! i've met celebrities!

0/10

1) am0n is not a n00b
2) wouldn't i have just said save a hoe?
3) if you wanna get into people's nasty attitudes, bringing up felching seems to be a homophobic, asshole.

Now it's cap'n-save-a-bro!

(lols JW I have no beef with you, but I had no idea the LGBT community had the monopoly on felching)

i think am0ns an interesting poster, i think hes impt, funny is irrealvent

-- anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 23 May 2006 04:36 (1 year ago)

I loves me the pinkmoose and I wonder what he's got to say about the gemskull.

Sorry, alluding to "nasty" sexual practices is a pretty common tactic of the homophobe (santorum bestiality/homsex equivalence).

err homosex

dan perry, scared of teh gays

Anyway, back to namedropping. I like it. Always have liked Hirst. Maybe/partially because I (think I) get it. His ideas just appeal to me. Koons however can suck a big fat tit/dick. I think he's just horrendous. I get it as well. The fact it's a pile of dung.

Sorry, alluding to "nasty" sexual practices is a pretty common tactic of the homophobe

????

Just whistle and pretend it's a foreign language. I always do.

The fact it's a pile of dung.

chris_ofili.jpg

"eat a bag of dicktits"

diktats?

ah, tictacs

:-)

need to put "starfelcher" into urbandictionary asap

apparently, it was luke skywalker's original name, or something

Luke Namedropper and his rich Daddy Vader

starfelchers incorporated

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/0/00/250px-Starjammers1.jpg

tom selleck to thread

here are about half a dozen ilxors who are capable of curating or chairing contemporary art events

uh, yes

DID SOMEONE SAY YUPPIE DOUCHEBAG

Yes, that must be it.

XP ahaha

why hallo thar

I LOVE WHOLE FOODS SO MUCH I CAN GET SPANISH PAPRIKA THERE

Fair enough.

it's part of why i think he's lazy. if he wants to work with a lifelong fascination with death, all the more power to him, but please try harder.

-- lfam, Monday, June 4, 2007 7:11 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

and in no way is this an intellectually lazy critique.

I bought a shiny silver necklace w/crystals & a crystal skull because it reminded me so much of the Hirst blingskull.

touche, sanskrit, but then again i made that while after i got back from the bar late at night where i spent $25.50 and made $2.00 while he spent $a.lot and is making ~$70 million.

maybe if damien or i had a clue what he was trying to accomplish with this work someone could muster some more critical elbow grease. it's really just an ugly diamond-covered skull (how do you cover something in diamonds and make it ugly?? wow). hirst is trying, i believe, to make his career into a work of art, but he lacks the discipline and the imagination to do so successfully.

i actually think this surprising ugliness is the most interesting thing about this. i'm curious as to how much the idea of the diamond influences the way i look at it and how much is just aesthetic.

to clarify, his lazy execution isn't so much a problem as the banal (or absent?) concept behind it. to quote sol lewitt: It is difficult to bungle a good idea.

it's quite funny. hirst's most famous piece is "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living". it was sold for
$8 million.
this is a human skull covered in diamonds. not subtle, but still funny.
laughing -----> bank

he's definitely getting better returns on his work now. the cost of making and exhibiting "physical impossibility" was probably at least half of that $8 million.

I would cast a little baby skull in aluminum and cover it with those 1x1 flat Lego pieces but little baby skulls don't have teeth.

aren't the teeth covered in gums

don't want to know how many baby skulls kenan owns

I withdraw judgement on whether it's actually "ugly" or not until I've seen it in the flesh. Some of Hirst's work seems kind of not-good until you actually see it up close and realise that it is much more powerful in the flesh than it is in photographs.

But then again, I rate Hirst as an artist, which I know a lot of you don't. He makes me think - and he does this while still creating work that is aesthetically powerful. Isn't the obscene cost of this thing (and the obscenity of that cost) part of the statement?

making a vast sum of money out of selling diamonds is part of his statement. the man is a genius.

Why are you so disgusted about his making money? Stop and think about that for a moment. Is it the diamonds? Or just sheer disgust that some people have that kind of wealth? Come on, get past your kneejerk reaction. Can you?

I don't think the question of whether the skull is "ugly" or not is terribly important. From a purely visual point of view, he could have done it with good quality fake diamonds for exactly the same effect at a fraction of the cost. So the outrageous profligacy is the point. I don't really have anything against that morally, but is the concept that interesting? I guess I'm not much of a fan of Hirst (or any of the one-note YBA conceptualists), but I think he'd done more interesting things.

he'd = he's

i don't see it's 'ugliness' as a problem. skulls look amazing, diamonds look amazing. of course they're both grotesque in terms of what they often represent but i'm sure that's his point. it's just not a particularly good point to make imo. i'm actually impressed by the object itself and vaguely interested in it's creation process rather than the concept itself or any perceived meaning behind it.

i'm not 'disgusted' by his wealth at all--if people are stupid enough to pay, lucky him, but market value doesn't tell you anything. you said it was part of the statement that he makes a shitload out of it. if so it's a pretty lame statement.

I like the work. It tells me that the meetings/battles between art/creative individuals and commerce/the machine have only one possible ending regardless of the level of success attained by their creators. I also like the questions it provokes (in me, at least) as to why oh why oh why that has to be. It's no longer a big deal for the world's richest to drop $50 mil on a painting on the secondary market, and no coincidence that he launched the work on the same day as the big art world rollers are in for secondary-market auctions (where the only winners are Christies etc). All artists want to make a living with their work and a few of them really want to coin it, but what they don't want is to feel like performing seals for the rich, or glorify social models they don't believe in. I think its brashness is designed to overpower and distract from its shrewdness and backstory.

nah

"wow this franchise movie is really interesting because the writer negotiated 5% of the back-end when no-one thought a sequel would come out of it."

i mean that's about it, isn't it? hirst's shrewd leveraging of the value of some diamonds.

It basically feels like caricature to me. It's the sort of thing you can imagine a fictional artist doing in a mediocre comic novel. Of course, Hirst was already a caricature - he's the visible part of the art iceberg for the general public, the artist as showman, conforming to preconceptions with his heroic drinking, morbid japes, finding himself in Mexico etc.

But c'mon, the namedropping really is...in your face.

the 'don't fixate on the money' thing is infuriating just cos if it weren't for the money he'd barely even exist, and certainly wouldn't be getting crowds of people -- who, you have to wonder -- massing on hoxton square as someone upthread said. i'm sure that means that his work is a 'commentary on the values and priorities of the art market' but i guess you could say the same about underperforming footballers or overpaid movie stars: their work is 'a commentary on' the market in which they're overvalued. only most of them haven't been to art college so can't pass it off as situationist/dadaist/some other ancient art movement-ist.

Actually I wouldn't say the same of footballers or actors; an artist is more like a director.

All it tells me is that humans have magpie genes...anyway HK this 'leveraging' argument misses the point since it happens whenever 'precious' materials are used in artwork. It is a shortcut in PR terms, which is apposite for a 45-year-old artist with a celebrity-obsessed gallerist (<- note: herein lies the conflict's heart; gallerist also marked the occasion of Hirst's first $1 mil work with similar hooha) but the absurdity inherent in a bunch of men in dark suits with guns guarding some tightly compressed carbon which people come from miles to see, is there for all to see. Don't forget that the raison d'emploi of the 'gatekeepers' is to show the masses including all of us and everyone we know that a pile of rocks is worth more than our lives will ever be, at least to the people who could contemplate buying that.

some of you people need to drop your romantic notions about what artists do

the very fact that an artwork unseen to us is provoking such debate tells us he's pretty much succeeded with this one. now to find a buyer who will complete the work.

That's a bad message to send out even if it is true. I will now shoot Damien Hirst. (xposts)

is there an argument that the bunch of men in dark suits with guns doing the guarding, are themselves part of the statement/art?

perhaps the best part, in a certain way

Well, it's just something I think of when faced with armed, privatised security forces and/or OTT police presence that guards private property and prioritises it over the human. Anyway G I'm sure the rentacops are a permanent and integral part of the work for security reasons, which is clever and zeitgeisty I suppose.

It's nice that the work is provoking many threadlets of debate, but as to tolerating a castigation for romanticising the practice of artists, I think you should fire your ire at gallerists who flatter their customers with the status of 'collector' not 'customer' or 'buyer' rather than the artists who make work for a variety of reasons, most of which have one sort of idealism or ideal in mind at source.

i'm sure we can all muster enough ire to fire at everyone involved (inc. ourselves).

the great thing about the work is ive never seen it, i never will see it, and ive never read an article about it, yet even just a thread about it on ilx means i feel i havent missed out

Are you sure you haven't read any Daily Mail articles about it, G?

they should install a moving floor like the one you stand on to see the queen's jewels

or better yet, just install it at the tower of london to fuck with peoples heads

i didnt see yesterdays daily mail, i slept in and couldnt get round to steal it from steves mailbox in time

hahahaha crown jewels of globalism wtf...

more fool you mr 'early bird' 696. excellent piece foretelling imminent UK property crash via mayan prophecies cross-reffed with nostradamus tealeaves.

in fact i think the Mail commissioned Hirst to produce this work to capture that impending situation perfectly. all is now clear.

once again I believe it may be time to bring up the washington post experiment wherein Joshua Bell played his Stradivarius for a bunch of federal commuters and maybe about 3 people plus a small child even noticed that they might be getting not-your-average-busker; if it wasn't for the platinum and diamonds and perhaps hirst's name involved this would be just your average tchotchke, which is something I think several other artists have already pointed out, maybe about a century ago, and it was funnier

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"

Hirst has discovered an ingenious way around this phenomenon, and even the relative anonymity of just being in a gallery - he'll make his thingamabob intrinsically more expensive and ridiculous than anybody else ever can, requiring trained killers with machineguns to even let anybody underwrite a semi-public display, etc. sheer volume of capital transcends irony.

once again I believe it may be time to bring up the washington post experiment wherein Joshua Bell played his Stradivarius for a bunch of federal commuters and maybe about 3 people plus a small child even noticed that they might be getting not-your-average-busker; if it wasn't for the platinum and diamonds and perhaps hirst's name involved this would be just your average tchotchke, which is something I think several other artists have already pointed out, maybe about a century ago, and it was funnier

-- TOMBOT, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 13:07 (8 hours ago) Link

sort of, but the dadaists used the commonplace and elevated it. hirst is using the spectacular to elevate himself.

The fact that you (Gatinha - and so many others) are bashing Damian here proves that you're wrong when you say it "simply does not resonate in any discourse about art or about the world". Why are so many people reacting in such a kneejerk way to how expensive the skull is? Answer: Damien has trolled them. Now-- think further, as it was meant to make you do, and figure out what offends you about a lot of expensive diamonds, or art-world celebrity, or a skull. Go ahead, do it.

you may have a point. i was looking at some of the janjaweed's work as well, and i had some similar feelings. again, weirdly, i only had to read about it, and not see it for myself. i hadnt thought of it quite like that. but there are questions in vulgar brutality, just as there can be beauty

worst momus clone ever

xpost

"i just wanted to wind you all up..."

Now-- think further, as it was meant to make you do, and figure out what offends you about a lot of expensive diamonds, or art-world celebrity, or a skull. Go ahead, do it.

assuming this sort of "trolling as art" actually exists, diamonds and art-celebrities are insipid topics, in my opinion.

what i really like about hirst's stuff is that almost EVERY piece he has ever made could also be called "the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living"

"The fact that we are talking about it makes it relevant" is the biggest rhetorical cop-out ever. Please desist.

bbbbbut the reason you want to desist talking about it is because you hate it and you hate it because it is secretly important nur nur nur

he's the sadé of the conceptual art world - every piece is the same, no matter how different it is

actually no that's wrong

"The artist Steven Gregory, who has made a series of human skulls covered in semi-precious stones and gems, including a whole set in different stones bought by Hirst, has nobly decided to regard any faint resemblance as flattering - so it really has turned out nice all round."

i think this thing looks cool (desktop for a while), but it's significance is entirely rooted in the spectacle; the piece itself, as TOMBOT said, is really just a neat-looking tchotchke.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/igotabeefpastry/hirstrider.jpg

I want a goldwing so bad.

he's the sade of the conceptual art world - the kind of thing robert elms thinks is clever.

It's the sort of thing you can imagine a fictional artist doing in a mediocre comic novel.

that's a pretty good zing.

Anybody remember Komar & Melamid's elephant paintings? Those incensed some people.

i just realized the other day that this is a hirst piece. i guess i missed whatever coverage of it there was when it was installed, one day i just walked by and it was there. i kinda like it. i figure it'll be good for freaking my kid out when he's old enough to be freaked out by such things.

http://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif

oops meant to add the image there, this is what i mean...

http://www.wirednewyork.com/art/damien_hirst_virgin_mother.jpg

It's like my dad always said: beauty is only skin-deep, but ugliness goes all the way to the bone.

that's a pretty good zing.

-- s1ocki, Wednesday, June 6, 2007 9:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

yeah it is, kudos

http://www.sculpture.org.uk/images/news/articles/0511southcoast.jpg

^^^^ funnier, therefore better

i really shouldn't go on about things out of my purview (ie. - art), but whatever:

regardless of whether or not hirst intended this, there is one take home message that has nothing to do with the spectacle or hirst himself: to me, the funniest thing about the piece is that it's worthless. that is, the ACTUAL worth of the piece (which is playing no small part in its expected sale price) is held in the stones and metal that comprises it. but in order for a collector to actually collect on that wealth in any guaranteed way, s/he would have to destroy the art. that's at least sort of interesting. works made of paint and wood and dead sharks and whatever aren't really worth anything if you try and sell the constituent parts, whereas those made from diamonds and platinum probably are. like, we're totally impressed by the crown jewels and the wealth of tombs, not just because of the workmanship and of the historical significance of what we find, but because the works are literally made out of lots and lots of money. with that in mind, maybe we can consider the hirst piece a very expensive joke: making a stupid, one-note, vapid, derivative piece of artwork all of a sudden becomes Important simply because it (a) cost a lot of money and (b) a famous dude made it. the only problem with that is that it's just not a very funny or original joke. bad comic novel, etc.

at least gregory's pieces are funny and humane, and reflective of the artist's interest in the medium--in working in bone. at they're fucking serious. hirst just phoned a jeweler or whatever and sent him some specs. i understand that's how a lot of conceptual art goes, but if the concept (SOMETIMES WE BUY SHIT/PARTY/FOOL OURSELVES IN THE FACE OF DEATH'S ACTUAL TEETH) is as inane as hirst's, then the result is totally boring, and no better than an admittedly rad looking memento of a bored, self-important person's afternoon smoke session.

and i think the "well the REAL art is the media's reaction" argument is also totally bogus: if we'd never seen the media over-react to celebrity and wealth and the OMG O RLY reality of art-world superficiality, then maybe the case could be made that this was, like, important, dude. but since very rich people have been doing dumb, expensive shit---and other people caring about it---since the dawn of time, it's not exactly brain-splitting to have damien hirst bring that to my attention.

yeah but this is a skull

like, death and shit

THANKS DAMIEN FOR FUELING MY RIDE INTO NEXT LEVEL UNDERSTANDING. YRS IS THE MUSIC OF HAVING SHIT FIGURED OUT BEYOND NORMAL DUDES

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/space_arp_2.jpg

regardless of whether or not hirst intended this, there is one take home message that has nothing to do with the spectacle or hirst himself: to me, the funniest thing about the piece is that it's worthless. that is, the ACTUAL worth of the piece (which is playing no small part in its expected sale price) is held in the stones and metal that comprises it. but in order for a collector to actually collect on that wealth in any guaranteed way, s/he would have to destroy the art

In what world do you live where diamonds have ACTUAL worth but art that sells for millions of dollars doesn't? Value is value in a capitalist society, and it's not like you can eat a diamond or very realistically build a house out of them.

Which is part of what I think is clever about the piece - he took a commodity that's valuable for arguably arbitrary reasons and fashioned it into an even more valuable commodity whose value is even more arbitrary.

...

chill, homey. what i meant is that if you were to pluck the diamonds off the side of Skull's face, you could actually sell them. to basically anyone. unlike, say, a chip of paint or a bit of preserved shark flesh, or whatever the fuck. if someone stole Skull and chopped it, they could stand to make some money with non-art people. i thought that was pretty obvious.

missing_the_point_on_purpose.jpg

so yeah, the value of diamonds is a social construct. or it isn't! i don't care! the only point i was making is that part of the reason this is so HOLY SHIT EXPENSIVE is that it's made out of "precious" metals/stones. if it had been made out of imitation stuff, it simply would not be going for 50million or whatever.

only point being, you could actually salvage real money out of this--destroying the piece--where as you couldn't by destroying something like, oh why not, the Mona Lisa. that is: someone that needed a bit of wood wouldn't buy part of the frame simply because it was made out of the mona lisa. cheaper to get that shit at home depot.

Yeah, but you'd be dumb to do so since it's worth more whole.

where as you couldn't by destroying something like, oh why not, the Mona Lisa. that is: someone that needed a bit of wood wouldn't buy part of the frame simply because it was made out of the mona lisa. cheaper to get that shit at home depot.

You could say the same thing for a $100,000 bill - tear it up and the paper's not worth much to anyone.

only according to the market. as art, it's wholly uninteresting.

also, this:

he took a commodity that's valuable for arguably arbitrary reasons and fashioned it into an even more valuable commodity whose value is even more arbitrary.

isn't really clever at all.

xp yeah duh!

you just sort of proved my point! "ripping up" the skull WOULDN'T make it worthless! it'd still have some sort of base (in many senses of the word) value!

Ok, chillax. I'm not trying to completely destroy your point here.

I just think that what he did has this "next logical move" quality to it in today's art market, which I like. Plus it looks cool.

And I don't think anyone whose seen his past work can take his shallow-sounding "Let's all have a laugh at death! Ha ha!" too seriously as the ultimate meaning of the work.

Plus it looks cool.

won't deny that

The only cool thing about it is that it's haunted.

haunted by teeth

most likely contemporary artwork to actually be worth money 1,000 years from now?

actually least likely because we can already synthesize gem-quality diamonds and 1000 years from now platinum is probably going to be totally boring compared to, say, wood from actual trees

in the future diamond will be cheaper than glass.

this book is way better than the skull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

I read boingetc: http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/07/fucking_with_perception_hirsts_for_the_l.html
PWND

aren't they the people that put ugly wheatpastes on abandoned buildings in Soho?

yeah, they really took him down a notch..

i think the brunt of the joke is on the dilettante who wasted a month of her life, if that is to be believed:

The "For the Love of God" prank was created using 6522 Swarovski crystals and took Laura, the artist, a month to create.

I would've just covered it in Elmer's glue & threw glitter on it.

yeah I mean at least for her sake I would have taken a half-decent photograph of the whole scene.

artworld potshots = zzzzzzz

I actually saw this a while ago and forgot to post it. Not sure if it's still up, but has anyone seen the giant Hirst installation at Lever House? I thought it was rather awesome/terrifying.

http://gothamist.com/attachments/arts_jen/200711hirst2.jpg
http://gothamist.com/attachments/arts_jen/200711hirst.jpg

http://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif

more awesome, really, was just walking through Manhattan and happening upon it and being initially shocked before realizing what it was, and then watching the reactions of other people that they stopped. One woman insisted to her children that it was some kind of animal testing.

Love the giant statue @ lever house. Haven't seen the installation. Looks cool & creepy. Hirst is a total wanker, but it doesn't bother me much.

It's in an all-glass lobby so you see it from the street. I don't know if you can actually enter during the day or not - in a way I kind of hope you can't.

Making http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/arts/design/16auct.html27 million in a day. Pocket change, really.

Bah, that was ugly:

Story

I loathe him no matter how much money is thrown at his ridiculous artifacts.

There he goes, the man who loathed Damian Hirst no matter how much money was thrown at his ridiculous artifacts.

DamiEn Everything Highlighted

I am so sick of you

Isn't the fact that vast amounts of money are thrown at his ridiculous artifacts a big reason so many people loathe him?

and in many cases the reason.

and the auction's loud blare
the bids bursting in air
gave proof through the night
that Vision was still there

Oh say does that skull-spangled wanker yet bathe
like a shark in a sea of formaldehyde waves

that didn't really wind up making any point, but I'm rather proud of it

I liked it

The more people that bitch about how much his art is, the more money his art will go up in value, I'm sure. All the rich art dealers are emptying their WaMus accounts and buying up this shit instead!

If I saw Damien Hirst I would give him a high five.

ChallOps: Rebuttal Unit

i know right, you just feel embarrassed because you forgot to bring me an apple or something like that. How are your Paglia lessons going? How would you apply them to an interpretation of Damien Hirst as a symptom of social decay? Don't tell me you dog ate your copy of Sexual Personae again.

Hirst, Tracey Emin et caterva are nothing compared to Nero setting Rome on fire or people using the Roman Forum as a pasture. I remember him when he first appeared, he's always been a complete fake. Money is something that doesn't always value things, specially art. Also, money chaning hands is the arts world is often more than a simple commercial transaction.

"changing hands in the arts world"

Everything that poem for some reason reminds me of Edward Gorey.

I really liked his cycle-of-life/death piece with the severed cow's head, maggots and flies encased in (what else) a glass box. Everything else I've seen, I could take or leave. The horse/shark stuff at least makes for a great spectacle. Monetary value aside, the skull just looks like a leftover prop from an 80's metal video. Who gives a fuck how much money he has?

"Hirst, Tracey Emin et caterva are nothing compared to Nero setting Rome on fire or people using the Roman Forum as a pasture."

This is the most trite thing ever written on ILX, some doing.

i know right, and yet it's the honest truth.

I should have just made it "Hirst was still there" since it didn't wind up being about Vision at all

DNFTT?

Pillbox OTM, though i would suggest the shark is actually a very enjoyable piece of art rather than simply an impressive spectacle. He has been a massive boon for contemporary art in Britain, and (until this latest auction) has generated an awful lot of money for galleries and all sorts of dealers, as well as instigating screeds of discourse on what constitutes 'art' ever since he won the turner. He has earned his money.

As for the thread title, yeah he probably is, but was comprehensively out-wankered by kirsty wark on that newsnight special a while back.

Vision, you are Momus and I claim my £5.

Now make me a cup of tea and some gingerbread and butter in exchange for all that sofa surfing.

I have to confess, I really enjoy Damien Hirst's art. He's certainly more value for money than most UK celebrities. Thought-provoking? Well, more clever than genuinely intellectual. And his stuff is often quite pretty. (The references to Victoriana don't bother me - my Grandmother ran the Botany department of her University, so I grew up with weird things floating in jars and butterfly collections and the like, so that kind of reference pushes my buttons.)

I'm never going to loathe an artist for how much money they make. Well, maybe be jealous of them, but not loathe them. I can loathe artists for producing work that doesn't appeal to me. But I don't suffer from the middle class loathing of money.

On reflection, I've actually decided that For The Love Of God (the blinging skull) is actually quite funny. And I like being amused.

more clever than genuinely intellectual

AKA a dimwit who had one good idea. Which is one more than most of us manage admittedly.

No, he's had a few good ideas.

And turned those good ideas into a long-running career.

he's had his dips in quality/amusement value for money, but what artist hasn't?

I'm surprised you don't point out the whiff of classism about the whole Hirst-hating thing. That it's OK for posh art school boys to do it for the love, maaaaan, but a working class boy from Leeds (can he play the single mother fiddle?) gets away with "scamming the artworld" and making a huge amount of money and suddenly it's oh noes, not fair play, etc.?

The more people that bitch about how much his art is, the more money his art will go up in value,

― Adam Bruneau, Tuesday, 16 September 2008 02:28 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This also applies to Soulja Boy and tbh I'd rather throw 27 mill at him.

I don't catch a whiff of classism here, and you how know my nostrils are constantly trained for any such whiff. I can't imagine being offended by anything as ineffectual and irrelevant as a visual artist.

I can loathe artists for producing work that doesn't appeal to me.

This seems just as weird and arbitrary a reason for loathing someone.

Not loathing the person, but loathing the artist. Or rather, loathing their work. Obviously, I do not *know* them (if you are saying that one requires to know someone on a personal level to loathe them.)

But producing "bad" (I don't know that there is any abstract quality of good or bad by which to judge art any more - hence why I say "not appealing to me" rather than a quality judgement) work seems a perfectly reasonable reason to loathe an artist.

Oh, I dunno. If something doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not willing to put in the effort to figure out an aesthetic position from which it would appeal to me -- which happens often enough! -- then it seems easy enough to just part ways with the art. Maybe if that parting of ways is somehow impossible -- a song being constantly on the radio, a painting that people just won't shut up about -- I could see some loathing over not being as free to avoid it as you'd like to be.

Most of the typical complaints about him could just as easily be made about Warhol. Warhol was better, of course.

Another working class boy done good

yeah, I was gonna say

warhol was shit (and so is damien hirst)

Oh yeah?! Well who do you like?! Childe Hassam?!

Killing myself for not buying spot painting for 50p at festival 15 years ago.

how are you doing it?

Watching you go first, then dying of depression.

But possibly not. I loves me some bait and switch.

a little reverse juliet action

that sounds so dirty

I really don't see what's so scandalous about saying Damien Hirst is a fake; even if you buy an original, you're still buying a fake-- a scam which is only made possible in a place like poor, gullible, London, with its self-hating and deluled arts establishment and all that foreign money floating around. I do not blame him, I blame the philistines from the Turner Prize etc. BTW I'm not Momus or anyone else from ILE/M. And stop betting, that's a barbaric habit.

Damien Hirst is completely amazing.

AKA a dimwit who had one good idea.

Not sure I can buy this. Why is he a dimwit? One of his points some way down the line was in line with an ILX thing about him in the past, i.e. is it just eye candy? His point was (not in answer to the ILX thread!) "What the fuck is wrong with eye candy?", which I think is spot on. What are we looking for? Something "deep"? Hmm.

On the second point, I think I might argue that most of the best artists have only had one good idea; I think Damien Hirst has had more than one.

"What the fuck is wrong with eye candy?", which I think is spot on. What are we looking for? Something "deep"? Hmm.

well argued

Thanks, although I wasn't really trying to argue anything.

lol i was being sarky

lol. Great humour

I really don't see what's so scandalous about saying Damien Hirst is a fake;

Dude, you're getting called out because you're boring, not because you're "scandalous"

please to have one of his defenders actually like reason out what's interesting about his work. i don't care about the money side, it's irrelevant (though i guess the diamonds thing has semi-intrinsic worth...) but you know, what are you getting from this? how is it even eye candy?

Well I think the point of that eye candy statement is something around not wanting to "reason it out".

Not wanting to... Maybe not being able to... Not caring about. I dunno

Why would you be able to reason out why something is eye candy?

xpost.

Everything etc, good, you may have guessed by now that I value my right to express opinion more than how people like you will react to it, so please ignore me and carry on with your poem writing or whatever it is that you do.
BTW, what Damien Hirst does is eye carrion rather than eye candy.

ooooooh good one

Well, as long as you know you're a douche, I guess it's OK then.

well-argued lads.

you may have guessed by now that I value my right to express opinion more than how people like you will react to it

Trans: "You may have guessed by now that I enjoy the sound of my own farts more than other people's complaints about the smell"

i resent being called a fucking lad. i am a man.

a lot of Hirst's work is definitely "eye candy". on a basic level (i mean without even considering their format and that they're real objects) his exhibits tend to be arresting or compelling images - on the surface. i like what i see, never mind what it's about. furthermore the scale and depth of construction is often pleasingly apparent (i'm being v rockist here). does he stand out for these things? probably not, or perhaps he shouldn't but i don't know.

well-argued lads.

well look who's fucking talking

Everything etc, add a "my own" between "express" and "opinion" on that phrase you quoted above will you please, I'm trying to concentrate here on a sweet George Jones cd and I lack the time to even ignore you.
Your metaphor is the written equivalent of those Hirst formaldehyde freak show abominations. Go see the Parthenon Frieze at the British Museum to cleanse and educate yourself.

If the constructivist paradigm of narrative holds, we have to choose between material discourse and textual deappropriation. It could be said that the primary theme of the works of Damien Hirst is the role of the artist as reader.

The subject is contextualised into a neoconceptualist paradigm of discourse that includes sexuality as a reality. But a number of sublimations concerning the paradigm, and eventually the meaninglessness, of dialectic society exist.

Debord uses the term ‘constructivist appropriation’ to denote the common ground between sexual identity and class. However, Foucault’s critique of material discourse implies that expression must come from communication.

So we've found the one aspect of the 90s Enrique doesn't love?

I have no great opinion on his work one way or the other.

But £11.1 million at Sotheby's when the rest of the world is going to the wall; we're kind of getting to the "we need a war" stage.

might wanna move that decimal point

Christ you're right, it's £111 million.

Let them eat zebra?

Vision, do you like any contemporary artists, at all?

I'm actually asking a serious question.

Because I felt quite similar back in the 80s. Fresh out of high school, I was a total Classicist, utterly enthrall to the great works of the past and felt that I'd missed out on something.

Hirst was, I think, one of the first contemporary artists that I actually managed to get something out of. Because he does manage to be totally engaging on that visceral, first impulse level. His quote "any art that requires a massive intellectual backpack is shit art" really chimed in me - because, living in NYC at the time, I was constantly surrounded with incredibly pretentious, highly conceptual, but totally un*aesthetic* art. He was kind of a gateway for me to understand what was going on in a lot of contemporary art, when I was prepared to write off everything since the Pre-Raphaelites.

In terms of his appeal, his "eye candy" - all I can say is that his work, in the flesh, when I saw it mid-90s at the Gagosian, was startling, immediate, arresting and also strangely beautiful. It was accessible in a way that lots of contemporary art just wasn't. And despite, or maybe because of the funny, clever, punning titles, I found it had some depth upon reflection.

Funny how ILX loves populism when it comes to music, but not when it comes to art. Liking Hirst is a bit like liking, say, Sugarbabes or something. Yes, massively popular, but shouldn't be sneered at because of that.

And Vision, it's all very well to appreciate the Classics. But you cannot live in that world without risking becoming a museum piece yourself, or ever worse, a big-C Conservative. The world has changed since then, and wishing it otherwise won't make it go away.

I guess many people don't have a problem with huge sums of money in the midst of a global recession being spent on inessential art by rich Russian financiers with the spare change they have left over once they've financed genocide in places like Georgia.

The news about his future work is interesting:

As part of his sales pitch, Mr. Hirst said that he would no longer be making spin or butterfly paintings and that there would be far fewer dead animals and almost no dot paintings.

I know I should not feed the troll, but no, Marcello, my judgement on the aesthetic quality of artwork is not based on politics of the end user or purchaser or patron. Otherwise, the vast majority of artwork throughout the ages, from those lovely classical statues to Rennaisance paintings funded by the Borgias would all be out, and we would be left with nothing but ugly, tedious social realism. No thanks.

If it came down to that - which it never does - I'd rather have a better world without art than a shitty world with one.

To some of us, a world without art would be unliveably shitty.

I simply don't understand this kind of thinking at all.

We're all supposed to celebrate the £111 million as a triumph for talent and private enterprise.

Dare to say that this kind of conspicuous consumption in a world where businesses are falling like dominoes and millions are losing their homes - largely because of stupid and arrogant betting on the part of the same people who buy such things - is the wrong message to be sending out at this time in history and you're accused of "envy."

Whereas it's the huge profits that these financiers have made off the back of the suffering of millions that make this sort of "private enterprise" possible.

We move closer to another, bloodier 1789 or 1933 with every new day.

And also, this implies that the world is "shitty" because of the art. And also, is drab social realist art from that utopian period of history we all remember? Or isn't that really just a case of shitty art, shitty world, in which case: wouldn't you at least have one?

Like, Watteaus in the Louvre, Versailles, the aristocratic system in France was pretty evil, but I'm glad we have both of these things. Kathe Kollewitz I could do without.

As I said, it never comes down to something as simple as that.

But if it was a case of either/or then I'd go for a better world every time, even if it were stuffed with cuckoo clocks.

Yes, but you do make the implication that there's some sort of blame that should be directed towards art you don't like making money (!) and the collapse of western social value (?!) which, really is a bizarre and pointless reason to dismiss art. And yes it really does smack of jealousy.

Should we stop listening to Britney Spears because wankers like her, or because the entire record industry is corrupt?

I just don't think the politics of the buyer/consumer has much bearing on the aesthetic content of art - unless that art is specifically being created directly for that market. And even then, I don't know...

Yes, art can be viewed as part of the greater context, of politics and economics and so on. But art, traditionally, is just as likely to be commentary or criticism as much of celebration of the dominant ideology, be that the Sun King or the Roman Empire or modern Consumerist Capitalism. It is a necessary dialogue for art to be relevant.

(God for a second there, I thought I was back in art school.)

And yes, i agree with IKR: really is a bizarre and pointless reason to dismiss art.

Nobody expects anybody to "celebrate" the sale, except for Hirst and Jopling, who I'll bet are pretty pleased.

"Should we stop listening to Britney Spears because wankers like her, or because the entire record industry is corrupt?"

Please don't suggest things like this! : )

i dislike hirst's art, but not as much as i dislike his public persona. tracey emin is the much better idiot savant. £111m just amuses me though!

actually i find it rather heartening to see that art is valued that highly, even art i don't particularly care for. it's much better than hearing "self-made men" drone on about how they built up a £93723933 trillion fortune off toilet paper or whatever

Did you get that number by bashing your keyboard?

also what i mean to say is, i heart dasha zhukova

xp yes

Unfortunately IKR I think you're mistaking projection for implication.

Clearly there are many people who see nothing wrong in an artist making £111 million - or however much of that is left once tax, agent's commission, Sotheby's commission etc. have been deduced - in a time of economic depression.

All I'm saying is that flagging this up as a triumph for meritocratic free market economics - see today's Daily Mail if you doubt me - at a stage when the world is hurtling towards self-destruction seems to me, to put it mildly, insensitive. Rubbing people's faces in it, to put it a tad less mildly.

Then again I don't understand the whole credit/mortgage drug either so obviously I'm unqualified to comment.

I'm not suggesting it for a moment! Just pointing out how bizarre a reasoning it is. Why should the enjoyment/aesthetic rumination on visual art be any different than that applied to music?

Would you dismiss an album which generated £111m in sales *simply* because people shouldn't be spending that much money on POINTLESS PIECES OF PLASTIC in a downer economy?

No, because music and uplifting artforms like it, are one of the things that enable people to transcend the misery of their lives. Ditto cinema. And I don't see why the same kinds of rules can't be applied to "fine" arts.

self-correction: "deducted."

Is any art form, however uplifting, worth £111 million? At that level doesn't it just become a business?

You mean, the Daily Mail has a creepy, crypto fascist take on the story?!?!?! Well that changes everything!

What do you mean: "at that level". It becomes a business the second people start claiming money for their art!

You think Diego Rivera worked for free?

I have nothing in principle against anyone making lots of money, provided that they don't kill or harm anyone else by doing so.

But the flaunting of it I find obscene.

And you know as well as I do that these works are most likely never going to be seen by the public again; they'll languish in dusty bank vaults as collateral for whatever war Medvedev decides to start next time he's bored.

Is any art form, however uplifting, worth £111 million? At that level doesn't it just become a business?

Go and throw out all your CDs. Go on, then. Any idea on the statistics of how much money the music industry is worth?

"flaunting"

Everyone involved in this *£111 million* purchase is a cunt. See you at the revolution.

Oh wait, silly me, no one buys CDs any more, they download them or get promo copies for free to STICK IT TO THE INDUSTRY don't they?

I wish people would just invest in the oil market instead. That would be so much better.

I am certainly aware of the stupidly high and unrecoupable advances EMI paid out to people like Robbie Williams and Mariah Carey when they knew full well they would never get their money back.

And now Guy Hands whines about the company being in freefall.

Had they invested in downloading when Napster started, instead of acting like scared 90-year-olds and trying to ward off the big bad new wolf in a foredoomed attempt to keep things as they were, they wouldn't be in this situation now.

So no, it's not worth it.

KBP OTM.

Also, I'm pretty sure they made a mint from Robbie Williams massive record deal because it included all merch and tour revenue.

"KBP OTM."

I think you just lost all credibility

I hope they were astute enough to ask for a fair price from the Chinese Government for all that Rudebox landfill.

KBP has a knack of getting to the core of things.

I have this image of Marcello tramping down to the guillotine, all kitted up Dads' Army stylee for the Revolution and no one else turning up except KBP dressed as Shakespearian fool.

You fool! That's not a guillotine, it's a HIrst installation. Why else would it be in a vitrine?

Won't need guillotines; just need to make sure we hit the five families in one morning, including Barzini staggering up the steps just so he can fall back down them again.

sigh

Great thread all round.

I hope they were astute enough to ask for a fair price from the Chinese Government for all that Rudebox landfill.

Unsold copies of ROBBIE WILLIAMS' latest album will soon be used to resurface Chinese roads.

The solo star's record label EMI has confirmed that over one million copies of RUDEBOX will be crushed and sent to the country to be recycled.

The products will be used in street lighting and road surfacing projects.

EMI has started the recycling initiative in an effort to reduce spending, as it suffers from financial difficulties.

The record label's new owner Terry Firma has stated that the main cause of its difficulties is the large advances paid to artists.

Meanwhile, Williams' manager has denied reports that he is on strike in protest over plans to make 2,000 EMI employees redundant.

Reports had suggested that the former TAKE THAT star was withholding his new album.

I find Hirst an annoyance. I do find his 'art' repetitive and produced for the maximum financial gain. Of course, that's not a bad thing but to be so painfully adolescent and still claim rebellion is pathetic. Watching the news last night he was carrying on as if he had come to the realisation all by himself that art could have a perceived value. Gosh, that's impressive from a seven year old but hardly a grown man with 20+ years making a very good living in the art world. I am saddened that he is ditching the gallerists that helped him when he was starting out but I am also comforted by the fact that they will have been made very wealthy over the years selling his stuff.

Basically: yet more fuss and money spent on work that I find trite, outdated and feeble.

he is not ditching the gallerists, they got their cut.

Umm yeah no it's kind of complicated; he stays with White Cube for representation but this sale was the province of this guy Frank Dunphy, his manager. White Cube has plenty more artists to do 50/50 splits with.

Well, apparently White Cube had a really big backlog of Hirst stuff that hadn't sold, this probably cleared that right up.

Cube and gagosian both got cuts from the sale, just not the usual split. Smaller piece of a bigger pie and all that.

I am pretty sure DH has a different split with JJ than the usual 50/50.

49/51!

yeah, that's kindof famous isn't it. Hirst gets like 80%

In any case, Jay an Larry not going hungry.

Coke is expensive.

I do find his 'art' repetitive and produced for the maximum financial gain.

Again, Warhol. And Picasso too.

Art has been a business for centuries. If you're complaining the prices are too high, that's a different issue, and plenty of people very much inside the monied art world agree. There's undoubtedly an uptick in investment for resale purposes (rather than long-term collecting), not to mention a growth in the sheer numbers, globally, of people who can afford seven, eight or even nine figure investments. Does all this stuff pollute art? Maybe, but it's also a part of what brings the art down to us plebes in the first place.

Jay born 'honourable' not hungry, doncha know...

Coke more expensive 10 years ago when people like that were actually doing it.

When kleptocrats buy art it goes into private homes, never to be seen or otherwise appreciated by public eyes again.

sainsbury's are doing a 2 for 1 deal on coke at the moment.

Yeah, but is it the real stuff, or is it that stuff going round that's cut up with all sorts of other nonsense, like water and so on.

I've heard some people cut it with rum, that must really burn!

Tesco's do 2 bottles for £1.50 and it's 100% pure, none of your alcopops blandouts.

sainsbury's are doing a 2 for 1 deal on coke at the moment.

― ken c, Wednesday, 17 September 2008 12:33 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It's not 2-for-1 its half-price. I've been caning the Diet Coke recently, like, a litre-and-a-half a day. Fucked my sleep patterns up fantastically.

Why don't they just put the art in the Sainsburys Wing of the National Gallery so we can check it out and take it home with us?

It's obscene how much money they make from Coke.

I'd much prefer a better society with worse softdrinks.

I loathe Coke no matter how much money is thrown at its ridiculous artifacts.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_jtVM5L8HJHQ/SFBAACMp8wI/AAAAAAAAAuw/U_lHMM-77t4/IMG_1459.JPG

But rum certainly uplifts and improves my spirits in times of economic downturn!

Uplift the spirits and downturn the bottle.

I really don't see what's so scandalous about saying Coke tastes fake.

<3 you all now!

oh i thought you were all talking about cocaine!!!!

LOL a junkie is you.

i'll never have a lil drug after seeing bruce parry's amazon the other night

I was watching New Tricks on the other side. Something about Richard Briers going around poisoning drugs. I think whoever wrote it and commissioned it must have been on coke at the time.

that should have been "poisoning DOGS"

Bet none of you ever thought you'd see me post anything like this, but...

1 Freeney, Dwight $ 30,750,000 Indianapolis Colts
2 Bulger, Marc $ 17,502,040 St. Louis Rams
3 Davis, Leonard $ 17,006,240 Dallas Cowboys
4 Adams, Gaines $ 15,434,000 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
5 Geathers, Robert $ 14,000,000 Cincinnati Bengals
6 Redding, Cory $ 13,625,000 Detroit Lions
7 Dockery, Derrick $ 13,504,680 Buffalo Bills
8 Bush, Reggie $ 13,375,960 New Orleans Saints
9 Dielman, Kris $ 13,305,280 San Diego Chargers
10 Johnson, Larry $ 13,300,000 Kansas City Chiefs
11 Ferguson, D'Brickashaw $ 13,253,380 N.Y. Jets Jets
12 Young, Vince $ 13,143,000 Tennessee Titans
13 Thomas, Adalius $ 13,006,720 New England Patriots
14 Porter, Joey $ 13,000,000 Miami Dolphins
15 Williams, Mario $ 12,981,240 Houston Texans
16 Grant, Charles $ 12,800,000 New Orleans Saints
17 White, DeWayne $ 12,605,400 Detroit Lions
18 Vasher, Nathan $ 12,354,560 Chicago Bears
19 Hawk, A.J. $ 12,221,770 Green Bay Packers
20 Tillman, Charles $ 12,104,720 Chicago Bears
21 Kelsay, Chris $ 12,100,000 Buffalo Bills
22 Polamalu, Troy $ 11,576,920 Pittsburgh Steelers
23 Barnett, Nick $ 11,475,000 Green Bay Packers
24 Fletcher, London $ 11,410,000 Washington Redskins
25 Clements, Nate $ 11,100,000 San Francisco 49ers

So... uh... can we ban Sport on Socialist grounds then? If we can, you might FINALLY make a socialist of me, with that on your platform.

i may have missed it but i don't think anyone called for a ban on anything apart from you, kate?

It was a joke, my dear. (Though Marcello wasn't calling for banning artists, he was calling for revolution and their heads getting chopped off. I'm too much a of pacifist to go that far.)

Ah, the fine art of totally missing the point.

xpost

i'm sure that was a joke also.

Joking or no, the point remains:

How can it be wrong for an artist to be paid £11 million, and this is a terrible recrimination on the artist - and yet athletes (like musicians) can be paid equally outlandish amounts of money without criticism or reflection on their characters or political acceptability?

If you can address that or carry on the discussion, then go ahead. If you're just here to take me to task for my humour - careometer.jpg

I suppose it's number of people you affect, how much your earnings reflect the amount made off you and ultimately your place within the industry. For both athletes and artists.

No, it's simply about return for money. If Russian oligarchs could make money by buying Football teams... oh wait!

If you're going to beat on the "fine art = elitism" dead donkey, then Damien Hirst is probably not the artist to pick on.

Yeah, Russian ogliarchs are buying football teams for the great profits they're making. Fantastic grasp of both sport and finance there.

I hear Abramovich has made a 3000% return on his Chelsea investments.

i'm not going to address it other than to say i agree with you, i can't think of any reason why hirst should be paid less than beckham or robbie.

people who dont want damien hirst to make money hate capitalism and free markets

Dom in missing the point shokah.

The ROI on a hirst or a premiership football club is in status not money.

how come there are no female libertarians? and when there are, they're scary as fuck?

Dom in missing the point shokah.

The ROI on a hirst or a premiership football club is in status not money.

― Drinking Island is inside every one of us (Ed), Wednesday, 17 September 2008 14:44 (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

If Russian oligarchs could make money by buying Football teams... oh wait!

― Sweaty and Cowbelled (Masonic Boom), Wednesday, 17 September 2008 14:35 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

I am trying to point out the illogic of Marcello's argument, which appeared to go:

-Hirst sells his artwork to Russian oligarch for vast amounts of money.
-Vast amounts of money are inherently bad
-Therefore, Hirst is bad
-(and will be first against the wall when the revolution comes)

You're right, I neither know nor care about the economics of football, but, the same logic applied seems to go...

-Footballers sell their skills (to Russian oligarchs or whoever) for vast amounts of money
-Vast amounts of money are inherently bad
-Therefore, Footballers are bad
-(and will be first against the wall when the revolution comes)

The argument is flawed, regardless of whether you are talking about footballers or artists.

Whether or not people *should* be allowed to make vast amounts of money is a totally different argument from whether anyone - be they a visual artist, a pop star or a footballer - is a wanker, or indeed, good at what they do, or not.

The only value judgement you can really make from this situation is whether or not the person (be they artist, footballer or pop star) is *worth* that much money. And in this system, flawed or not, it's market forces that decide that.

Suggestions:

-Have your beef with market forces.
-Judge Hirst's art on its own terms.

The end!

*jazz hands*

The only value judgement you can really make from this situation is whether or not the person (be they artist, footballer or pop star) is *worth* that much money. And in this system, flawed or not, it's market forces that decide that.

This was sort of what I was saying to be honest: it's how much you can make others sort of thing.

It's all a bit "how long is a piece of string?" really.

How much is an artwork worth? Whatever people will pay for it.

Though Ed is right - with Hirsts and football teams, it probably is more about status than money. But then again, part of the problem is how much of the vast sums of money that city boys, for example, are paid is about status, rather than value? (Totally different topic there.)

I am trying to point out the illogic of Marcello's argument, which appeared to go:

-Hirst sells his artwork to Russian oligarch for vast amounts of money.
-Vast amounts of money are inherently bad
-Therefore, Hirst is bad

Oddly enough I said the following:

I have nothing in principle against anyone making lots of money, provided that they don't kill or harm anyone else by doing so.

But the flaunting of it I find obscene.

I usually assume that disproving an argument necessarily presupposes having grasped the argument first.

Clearly some of those millions would be far more wisely spent funding adult literacy classes.

I'm sorry, there is no adult literacy class that enable me to see inside the seething morass that is your head and figure out exactly where your personal definition of "flaunting" begins and ends.

You two are so cute! I for one approve of this ILX coupling. Let those against speak now or forever hold their peace!

"You're insufferable!"

"You're insufferable!"

"Why I've never met anyone so pig-headded!"

"I've never met anyone so stubborn!"

"Kiss me!"

*smoooch*

Question: Does the old "get a room" meme ever get invoked when two straight males engage in a long-running dispute?

Didn't that just happen???

Because the only way I ever see it getting invoked is through sexist putdowns of "uppity" women.

You're cute when you're angry!

Question: Does the old "get a room" meme ever get invoked when two straight males engage in a long-running dispute?

Answer: yes

I believe that everyone can be called out to get a room. It makes sense really. Sometimes, regardless of what you normally are in to, you just need to do things. To clear the air, like.

I'm so not sexist I can say incredibly sexist things and its totes cool

"Oh my god she's so hot. She's hot like a curry. She's so hot she's making me sexist. Bitch."

what would two straight males do in a room? i guess one could lift weights and other could spot him

oh boy, right again!

Sometimes people fight because they secretly like each other.

Sometimes people fight because they really cannot stand each other and are never going to see eye to eye, let alone understand each others' viewpoints, no matter how many dull afternoons they spend at work rehashing the same old arguments.

My bad for having a slow afternoon at work. I shall desist from feeding the troll.

Wake me when this thread is about Damien Hirst's art again, OK?

Hey, come back! I thought you were joking when you called us for being sexist dicks!

what would two straight males do in a room? i guess one could lift weights and other could spot him

Or 'dot' him as Damien would have it...

A far more interesting "argument" would be whether footballers are better artists than artists, largely because they don't know they're artists.

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/David_Winton_Bell_Gallery/images/beuys_beuys_zoom_im.jpg

is comedy better when it's unintentional?

Lots of kids are so that means comedy must be as well!

Lots of kids are so that means comedy must be as well!

Hello sense, I don't believe that we have met!

???

I really want a DFW DH thread connection

this i turning into a load of nonsense, anybody can see that juande ramos, f'rinstance, is worth 60k of anybody's money per week.

I for one would not pay a penny for Ramos. I hear that his watercolours are atrocious.

I really want a DFW DH thread connection

― I know, right?, 17 September 2008 16:52

???

Just how much of a wanker is Damien Hirst? [Started by Gatinha (rwillmsen) in May 2006, last updated 1 minute ago by hyggeligt on I Love Everything] 184 new answers

david foster wallace - is he a cunt? [Started by jerry curl in March 2005, last updated 22 minutes ago by gr8080 (max) on I Love Books] 9 new answers

ILX, cuttin' 'em down to size

board description

World's Forgotten Girl, I appreciate your comments, I understand you POV about the effect he's had on you in NY. Contemporary art to me is Gerhard Richter, Lucian Freud et al, not exactly the latest generation of artists to be sure.

The problem w/ Hirst is that he only acquires meaning if you're willing to buy into a whole subset of misinterpretations, or rather, you must agree to lower your standards down to the current whims of the arts market, whose theoretical basis is very frail and whose objectives are outright meretricious. I mean, how much has Charles Saatchi invested in Hirst? It's not like Ruskin publicly defending JMW Turner, it's a moneymaking scheme fueled by resentment towards classical art.

Also, there's no equivalent for punk rock in painting. These rebels/iconoclasts are selling attitude and scandal, not art, whose roots are in spiritual elevation and beauty, rather than some sort of fleeting jolt to épater la bourgeoisie. We already have Marylin Manson to do that.

His quote sounds disingenuous to me because it appeals to the contemporary laziness I think; really getting out of art all it has to offer requires effort and is something developed throughout life. We can, of course, look at a Fran Angelico fresco and simply appreciate the pretty colors, but there's more than that.

I say in 15 years the market for pickled cows and bling bling skulls will be ebay rather than Christie's. On the other hand, the Renaissance painters, Cézanne, Goya et al will be more valuable than ever in every sense.

Also, cmon, Hirst is the most elitist aspect of art these days. People know him because he makes a splash, but they don't really like him. Two big british tabloids (The Sun and the Daily Mail) have published today (17 Sept.) scathing reviews of his work in the context of the recent auction-- The article in the Sun even teaches how to make a small Hirst tank for only 10 pounds using a carp!

WF Girl, look, spending most of our time in the ILEs and twitters and Starbucks, reading aspirational magazines and whatnot, we tend to think the world is more modern, hip. cutting edge than it really is. Most people live conservative lives with conservative tastes, that is, an honest appreciation of beauty, hard work, visual imagination and, of course, real talent.

^^ c+ping Robert Hughes' comments

i thought it was more a long drawn out version of "my kindergartner could do that".

Robert Hughes is more of a modern man than me I'd say. He's very corageous and sensible, it was very decent of him to denounce the intergalactic gap between Hirst's market value and his actual aesthetic worthlessness.

Most people live conservative lives with conservative tastes, that is, an honest appreciation of beauty, hard work, visual imagination and, of course, real talent.

Most people like mediocre paintings of ships and weeping virgin maries.

PROVEN BY SCIENCE

Oh wait but my experience is with Americans - y'all have the BBC and whatnot to educate the public on what's beautiful

Hey Vision peep Robert Hughes' wife! She tidy!

http://i38.tinypic.com/2qn1v94.jpg

Question: Does the old "get a room" meme ever get invoked when two straight males engage in a long-running dispute?Question: Does the old "get a room" meme ever get invoked when two straight males engage in a long-running dispute?

Am I the only one who remembers when this happened after a particularly hickey-prone debate between J0hn D. and Momus?

he only acquires meaning if you're willing to buy into a whole subset of misinterpretations

That is how art (love, life, God, politics, etc.) works! Enjoy it!

The article in the Sun even teaches how to make a small Hirst tank for only 10 pounds using a carp!

Hirst PWNED

http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1277250

$80!

http://www.tommyuk.dk/writing/hypeart/images/13_gallery_2_pic2.jpg

Carl André is a much more interesting artist than Hirst.

Well, you kinda just helped prove my point then.

That'll learn you, ZZ!

Yeah. I guess the "my 3 year old son could do that" argument has been around since Picasso. It's amazing it's still rolled out. I'm not much fond of Hirst because what he does seems obvious, one-note, lacking depth and ambiguity.

Look, Vision, I've had almost zero sleep and and I'm still a bit shattered from the car accident last night, so I may be a bit less lucid even than usual.

In what way is it "lowering my standards" to attempt to accept and appreciate art on its own terms? In my youth, I hated many things for not conforming to my tastes, and derrided those that appreciated them as being somehow aesthetically inferior to myself. For example, chartpop, abstract expressionism, country music, Miami Vice, 20th Century architecture. Oh my god, what a fraud, how can they fall for it, when are people going to wake up and realise it's all wank?

As I grew up, and had more and more and different experiences, I learned to understand, even if I didn't always appreciate, what it was that people saw in them. My brother's passion, and a series of courses at the Cooper Union led me to understand that there was to modern architecture than ugly, blank grey blocks, and to see a kind of beauty in the minimalism of Mies Van Der Rohe or Le Corbusier, even if I didn't actually *like* it myself. Ditto a walking tour with the curator of the world's largest collection of Hudson School AbEx paintings, and a drunken night with a boy from the midwest who loved Patsy Cline and the Old 97s.

In fact, WRT chartpop, I can pretty much credit ILX - before this place was born, I truly believed that no one could ever appreciate things like Abba or Britney Spears for any reason other than irony value. After some interesting debate with Tom E and Mark S and the Freaky Trigger crew, I realised that it was possible to combine quite sophisticated analysis of music with a love of something I initially considered incredibly cheesy. (And even grow not just to appreciate those readings, but also to love the music myself.)

Although I'm not a post-modernist, I still find this idea of "lowering" or "raising" problematic. (Are we gonna revive that long thread about "Middlebrow"?) I don't make that jump from learning to read a work of art - to "buying into a whole subset of misinterpretations" (my highlight.) Sure, you have to start with a set of cultural assumptions to read a piece of art, but I don't know why that makes it specifically misinterpretations.

When I was young, I used to think that disliking something that a whole bunch of other people liked was some kind of punk rock badge of superiority. These days, I'm more likely to wonder "OK, is there something that *I* am not getting here?" Just because you dislike something doesn't mean it's aesthetically worthless.

Please don't include me in your world of starbucks and "twitter" (whatever that is) - I don't read aspirational magazines, unless you count Country Life. I'm a middle aged woman who works in an office. I've learned to constantly be surprised by people.

I don't really get your whole argument that Hirst is somehow elitist because the Sun and the Daily Mail slag him off in print. The very fact that Hirst is even *in* rags like the Sun and the Mail, even if painted as a cartoon villain, shows a certainly level of populism. Quite frankly, what other contemporary artists can Daily Mail readers even *name*? Whatever else he is, Hirst is a very clever man, and a master of self promotion. (I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with promotion - without a certain level of it, you can be the most brilliant painter in the world but you'll never show anywhere but your bedroom.)

The outrage of "OMG, you can build your own Hirst for £8 at a hardware shop" isn't just "my 3 year old could do it" but also very very silly, along the lines of "OMG, all of Da Vinci's works were just made with PAINTBRUSHES you can purchase at any ART SUPPLY SHOP for 50p!" Any artwork is more than the sum of its constituent parts, whether that's vitrine and cow or canvas and pigment.

For me, personally, the depth and ambiguity in Hirst's work is often supplied by the title. An ambiguity like "Nothing Is A Problem For Me" adds an (albeit slightly sophomoric) depth to its glossy, pop art sheen.

As to the Saatchi connection - again, I don't judge art by its patronage. The Renaissance and Classical works you worship would certainly be out by those qualifications - no matter how suspect his politics, I'd still rather meet Charles Saatchi in a dark alley than a Borgia, a Medici or a Roman emperor, thanks.

My problem with strict classicism is the same as with any past-worshipping (like the 60s nostalgia in magazines like Mojo, etc.): it's very easy to appreciate artists from the past, and hold them up as evidence of a lost golden age, because you have the benefit of hindsight and time to wash away the dreck.

With contemporary art, you have to look a little further, and the only distance/perspective you can get is in your own mind. Sure, it's easy to be swept up in hysteria about the cutting edge and the Next Big Thing. But it's just as easy to dismiss an artist because you encounter them in their fallow period - most artists have their big flash, wham bang, of their moment that they are new groundbreaking, and then spend the rest of their lives in overproduction, churning out more of the same. Think of Matisse, think of Monet - oh my god, what a one-trick pony, if I never see another sodding water lilly, it'll be soon enough - think of Dali. It's only with perspective that stuff ends up deified enough to get into the canon. (Not even talking about all the cultural, race-based, class-based and gender-based filters that go into making the canon.)

It just seems a bit lazy to me.

If you don't like Hirst's work, that's fair enough. But you might want to think twice about projecting your own mindset and (mis)interpretations onto those who do.

"a drunken night with a boy from the midwest who loved Patsy Cline and the Old 97s."

sigh...*

*dreamily

"it's very easy to appreciate artists from the past, and hold them up as evidence of a lost golden age, because you have the benefit of hindsight and time to wash away the dreck."

Also, you've had legions of writers, thinkers, critics and institutions canonise these things for you. I mean you specifically Vision, because I don't believe you love anything.

Ha ha, that got your attention.

(Personally I think Hirst is kinda sexy but I know no one in the world agrees with me on that score. Especially after seeing him naked.)

x-post

Also, you've had legions of writers, thinkers, critics and institutions canonise these things for you

Exactly. And I'm well aware of the filters (cultural, racist, sexist, classist, etc.) that are applied to things that get canonised.

Look, Vision, I've had almost zero sleep and and I'm still a bit shattered from the car accident last night, so I may be a bit less lucid even than usual.

You were in a car accident with Vision?

Is he okay? Jaw wired? Hands in casts?

What? How did you get that from that statement?

I was in a car accident with a krautrock band and spent half the night comforting a flustered German woman!

Or are you joking that this thread is a bit of a carcrash? ha ha ha.

BTW, Hirst can actually, like, paint very well. His realistic paintings display plenty of "skill," if not beauty (surgery isn't exactly beautiful). Not that it should necessarily matter, but I think that even if you lean more classicist, it ought to give you pause about your snap judgments of someone who can paint very well in the traditional sense and chooses not to. Of course I guess someone could just say "He's looking for gimmicks to get noticed because his realist painting didn't do the trick." But that just raises another point -- good, skilled realist painters are a dime a dozen.

Stuckists, anyone?

Hirst gets his assistants to do his paintings. He has a production line where some people are better at shiny and some at blood, some at flesh and they each do bits of the painting as it goes on.

He did, finish them.

Again, criticism that could be leveled at any number of artists who ran studios - Rembrandt, Michelangelo, in fact, pretty much any artist worth their salt until the 19th Century or so. Hence "school of" in unproved attributions.

big kinkade fan

I wasn't using it as a criticism, just a correction.

http://www.karendelac.com/squidoo/garden_of_prayer.jpg or http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/galleries/art/hirstwhitecube/031_05_hirst_350x300.jpg

OK, there's a question - is Hirst any "better", "worse" or "no different from, really" Kinkade or Vetriano or other popular contemporary artists that get a lot of sneerage for being popular/populist?

(Yeah, I know, devils advocate or challops - you decide?)

I mean, there's hella lot wrong with that Kincaide painting directly above, in terms of colour, proportion, placement - before even addressing the subject matter. However, it's it's designed with a clear knowledge of what humans find appealing in scenes - vista and refuge.

I don't like it. Technically, it's badly done. But I can understand why someone would like it.

Eh, no one left to argue with? I really should get off the interweb and do some work anyway. I can only hope that *I* will make £111m at mine own show next month. I'll be lucky to make 111p.

i didn't realise the Virgin Mother was his in NY, I like that a lot.

The majority of his stuff, ie things like the animals in glass boxes, is pretty dire and i hope he's laughing at the rich fops giving their money to him.

http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n117/100artworks/cartrain/Policeposter.jpg

Is that for real? If it is, I'm loving the police-speak. 'an incident involving a pack of pencils' - what that really signifies is almost definitely more mundane than the first half-a-dozen things that crossed my mind.

charlie brooker's column covers it. it's not definitely a hoax, but it's most likely real.

Nah, it's fake: http://www.100artworks.com/catalog/cartrain-theft-ransom-signed-guerilla-graffiti-print-p-660.html

All posters are signed with one of hirst's pencils.

I think actually they're everybody's pencils since the piece belongs to the Tate.

Hirst has a nerve; I wonder how Sigmar Polke feels about the homage to his dots, amongst other things. Reappropriation and re-interpretation are two touchstones of DH's practice so I hope judge rules that he can suck it, basically.

Formerly cool yBAs who turn high-handed once celebrity defines them rather than The Work: DUD.

He's still kinda hott, tho.

It says much about the actual niceness of most yBAs that I can only think of two who have gone wanky, and they have the same manager! Note: 'manager' not gallerist; for once a gallerist is not involved in the attitude machine.

LOL Kate...nobody's saying they wouldn't hit it, but right now that's in the SLAP sense.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/9/15/1253015593612/Cartrains-portrait-of-Dam-005.jpg

pretty sure that's a 'shop.

dunno, it could be nobby stiles?

diamond geezer

treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable is a great title

lots of the pieces look fun, theres a doc newly up on netflix also

aww i was hoping this was an rip revive

preferably a double suicide with his great pal Dave Stewart, who considered him (in the 90's) to be the Picasso of our age.

The exhibition was pretty incredible. It was one of the most impressively staged shows I've ever seen. It was great fun to view in the context of museum shows- everything from the materials to the the objects to the didactic material was such an elaborate and thoughtfully considered sendup that I was won over even though I came in with the intent to hate the show.

I can't say I'd ever want to see any of those objects outside of this presentation, but I ultimately found it admirable in terms of craft and commitment and seduced in the same way I'd be taken in by any similarly scaled & budgeted spectacle.

calm down, cal. 'here comes the rain again' is an all-time jam.

Damien save me
And be my guide
Sooner or later
We're all gonna die
When we were walking
Through the streets
Everything you said was bittersweet
And I wish that we could be in a
Bottle of time just you and me
Let's talk about the ways and means
The body shape
The love supreme
And drink drink until we disappear
Damien save me
And be my god
Sooner or later
I'm gonna die like a dog
Cut me in half
And I'll let you see
What this whole wide world
Has done to me
I'll be you sacrificial cow
Just tell me when and I'll
Show you how
Let's talk about
The sacrifice
The body limbs
That rest on ice and drink drink until
We disappear
I know you'll never let me down
Down down down
So let's take it and push it
And kick it and break it

lol, that's one of the worst things I've ever read. As you were.

i always liked how trashy and flash Hirst the whole Sensationalism school was

very influential stuff, very ahead of its time. the culture jamming and high/low stuff gets more and more relevant each year.