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.

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.