‘Like no other artist of his generation, Damien Hirst has permeated the cultural consciousness of our times.’ That is according to the curator of Tate Modern’s major retrospective show.
Hirst is famous for covering a skull in diamonds, displaying a shark in a tank of formaldehyde and presenting the head of a cow that is eaten away by maggots and flies, all in the name of modern art. A figurehead for the Young British Artists who came to prominence in the 90s, Hirst has quickly become a multi-millionaire and is well-known for his forthright approach to the financial world that drives art production.
Con art?
A new book by former curator Julian Spalding has given voice to what many people have feared: that we’ve all been taken in by Hirst’s art when in fact he is a fraud. Con Art — Why You Ought to Sell Your Damien Hirst While You Can postulates that works by Hirst and other ‘conceptual’ artists will plummet in value once the art world recognises that putting something in an art gallery does not make it art. Spalding suggests that Hirst’s success is built on the myth that innovative art must be shocking, when in fact this is all part of a dire case of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’.
Hirst is certainly desperate to present a sense of spectacle and provoke his audience: his work attempts to wake people from the calm stupor that the art gallery can induce. Despite his confrontational approach, he does not wholeheartedly turn his back on the conventions of great art. His installation work is usually created by a team, but he did in fact paint an entire show’s worth of work, displayed in 2010 at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition was branded by The Guardian ‘a self-obliterating homage’ to Hirst’s painterly ambitions.1 This is to say that, although he wants to be a great painter, he isn’t one and he knows it. Their reviews also referred to the paintings as ‘a memento mori for a reputation’, a phrase which brings us closer to uncovering what Hirst’s work is really all about.2
Religious art?
Hirst is terrified of death, obsessed with and captivated by the knowledge of mortality. The title of his pickled shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, is just one of many clues. A number of Christian websites quote him as saying directly: ‘I am going to die and I want to live forever. I can’t escape that fact, and I can’t let go of that desire’.3 This romantic yearning for infinity leads him towards religious themes.
Hirst’s conspicuous titles suggest that he is trying to say something meaningful about the subject of spirituality. He has produced cabinets of medical equipment named after the disciples, a severed cow called Prodigal Son, a petrified dove called The Ascension of Jesus and a sculpture named Virgin Mother. His work regularly incorporates references to Christianity, but, like Warhol before him, he hovers between faith and mimicry, infected by a kind of ironic self-awareness. Works like For the Love of God, the diamond-encrusted skull, combine his sincere reflections on the fragility of life with a provocative approach to religion, money and death itself.
Big ambition
Hirst claims that his work is not divinely inspired, yet clings to a sense of mystery in art and the hope of eternal authenticity: ‘I don’t believe [that art is] about God-given genius, but I do believe somehow in the magic of art even though I don’t want to. I believe in science. I want clear answers. [...] I want to make art, create objects that will have meaning for ever. It’s a big ambition, universal truth, but somebody’s gotta do it’.4 Perhaps Hirst hopes that, in being remembered as the man who tried, he will achieve a measure of immortality. Instead, it is likely that, in the words of New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl, ‘Hirst will go down in history as a particularly cold-blooded pet of millennial excess wealth’.5
The Damien Hirst exhibition runs until September 9 at Tate Modern, London.
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/oct/26/damien-hirst-modern-art
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/oct/14/damien-hirst-paintings-wallace-collection
3. http://www.bethinking.org/truth-tolerance/introductory/dont-all-religions-lead-to-god.htm
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/11/damien-hirst-tate-retrospective-interview
5. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2012/01/damien-hirst-art-not-meat.html
Rachel Helen Smith (nee Thorpe, just married — congratulations!) works as an events planner and freelance writer in Cambridge. More of her articles are available at http://www.rachelhelensmith.com
