On the 31st of March, art critic and author Julian Spalding published an open letter directed to the museum staff at Tate Modern in the Daily Mail, in which he strongly condemned the Damien Hirst exhibition opening at Tate. Spalding crowned Hirst a ‘Con Artist’ – a con man, a trickster – and uttered his grievances over the choice of Tate, a prestigious and important art institution, to give Hirst’s art a platform. Initially, the museum staff refused any comment on the cutting criticism, but eventually the whole issue got a nasty sting in the tail: Spalding was denied access to the Hirst exhibition; a critical viewpoint was obviously not welcome. Tate’s unreceptive attitude towards art critical views makes reviewing this exhibition all the harder. When an art institution refuses criticism, dogmatism lures around the corner.
And yet, as an art critic, the phenomenon that is Damien Hirst is difficult to ignore. This richest living artist ever has been part of contemporary art for a quarter of a century, and this never without controversy or criticism. He famous affaire with the influential art collector Charles Saatchi – deemed personally responsible for Hirst’s success – and the astronomic figures his artworks are fetching at auctions these days, show that Hirst is never a stranger to commerce, which is one of the main criticisms uttered by anti-Hirst aficionados.
Simultaneously, though, Damien Hirst is also considered by a vast majority as the single most important artist of his generation, and his artworks – such as a shark floating in formaldehyde, or a diamond encrusted skull – easily approach an iconic status, comparable to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
For the Love of God, the aforementioned diamond skull (2007), temporarily resides in the prestigious Turbine Hall of the museum – until the 24th of June this ‘luxurious death object’ can be gazed upon by small scatters of visitors. A lot more than a dark box, within which the sparkling work is centrally positioned, it is not, yet Tate found it necessary to only gradually admit small groups of visitors. Those who are tired of the endlessly long queues, can escape to the merchandise stand, manned by a tired looking British teenager: t-shirts, posters and all sorts of knickknacks have been printed with the image of the glistening skull for this special occasion.
The actual exhibition only starts on the second floor, with the first room where Hirst’s earlier works are shown. Eight colourfully painted saucepans (8 Pans) and a framed string of sausages (11 Sausages) were plucked out of the collections of international museums and private collectors to serve here as an introduction to the famous blockbuster works.
Those who thought they’d discover the gem of Hirst’s genius here, will probably be disappointed: these works don’t seem able to transcend the work of a confused art student who doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say with his art yet.
What is surprising is Tate’s choice to incorporate Hirst’s paintings – a medium with which Hirst is hardly ever associated. His so-called Spot Paintings – a collection of colourful dots which have been placed, with geometrical precision, in endless series – are hung upon the otherwise white walls of the museum. With these works Hirst wants, as he explains himself, to introduce a scientific dimension to painting, by painting the dots of exactly the same dimensions also at exactly the same distance from one another. Well, he let’s them be painted, as Damien Hirst notoriously never actually makes his own works, but surrounds himself with a small following of assistants who do the ‘dirty work’ for him. However, these paintings, reminiscent of a print on the average IKEA bed sheets, introduce an almost laughable quality: more than some formal play, it is not; Hirst’s attempt at painting shows itself completely empty and devoid of any meaning.
Science is one of the themes which Damien Hirst often visually translates, which explains his fascination for pills, surgical instruments and glass vitrines. With an uncontrollable urge for collecting, Hirst presents endless series of medical objects, modelled after a display at a natural history museum: innumerable glass shelves and cupboards are filled with colourful pills and scalpels. These works feel cold, clean and impersonal – perhaps an intended reference to the disinfected operation quarter? – yet it is difficult to discern the actual meaning of these pieces.
By far the most famous works made by Hirst are his so-called formaldehyde pieces, in which Hirst floats all sorts of animals in a tank filled with said chemical. With these works Hirst is said to express his signature themes – life, death and nothingness – the best. With a scientific precision he freezes he lifecycle of an animal into an endless existence in the museum. These works are then decorated with a hubristic title, or would you describe a dead shark as ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (1991) yourself?
The work A Thousand Years (1990) actually succeeds the best at conceptualising the ever connected elements life and death. In a big glass tank a de-skinned cow’s head has been placed in a dramatically positioned puddle of blood. Hundreds of flies are swarming through the tank and feed on the cow’s meat, while a little clutter of maggots in one of the tank’s corners ensures the future of the fly colony. Around the raw head are scattered tens of dead flies, and also the fly catcher which has been placed in the tank by the sadistic Hirst becomes a true fly cemetery. A whole lifecycle, from life to death, has been captured in this work, be it with little subtlety.
A similar work depicts the lifecycle of the butterfly: In and Out of Love (1991), a megalomaniac installation where living butterflies are hovering through one of the exhibition spaces. Though, the work shows itself not as effective as A Thousand Years, seeing as Hirst – who would like to express the fragility of existence with this work – replaces the horror from the former piece with a choice for formal beauty. The brightly coloured butterflies, which have to express Hirst’s self-declared ‘poetry of life’, are merely floating through the space, or resting on one of the plants.
But when one of the Tate’s co-workers whispers under her breath to one of the others ‘where do the dead butterflies go?’, a truly poetic but by the artist unintended moment unfolded. In her protective hand she held a shrivelled up blue butterfly which died in the installation. Although Hirst would like to address themes like fragility and the duality beauty/ugliness, yet hiding the dead butterflies seems diametrically opposed to that. The image of the shrivelled up butterfly in the hand of the Tate co-worker showed itself much more powerful than the flying butterflies in the museum space. The discrepancy between form and content seems a constant in Hirst work: he would like to address fundamental themes such as life and death, yet he determinately chooses the pleasant experience, instead of a confrontation with the raw reality of death. To make a piece like In and Out of Love truly effective and striking, he should let the butterflies be trampled on by the hordes of visitors gaping with open mouths at the beautiful insects. He should confront the audience with the ugliness and rawness of a squashed butterfly, if he wants to make the dichotomy life-death truly tangible.
Instead, however, Hirst places visually seductive butterfly paintings in the following room, where he composed stained glass windows and geometrical figures out of the brightly coloured butterfly wings. Thus, again a choice for the pleasing and pleasant.
And that’s exactly what it all boils down to: Damien Hirst seems to be a sneaky businessman who perfectly knows what he can sell to his audience and what he cannot. As a master-manipulator he plays the masses and lures them with sellable visual beauty, without having to be too confronting.
He wraps hollow words such as ‘death’, ‘life’ and ‘nothingness’ in a glitzy packaging making gullible visitors and pseudo art connoisseurs grab for their purses.
The same ideas – death, life and nothingness – are expressed in always the same artworks: the whole exhibition seems to exist out of 3 or 4 ‘unique’ pieces, which are then endlessly repeated.
How many people would think, after their visit, that they have seen ‘real’ art that day?
Probably quite a lot, whereas what Damien Hirst does can hardly be considered art at all.
Because, the oh so important critical dimension is missing, as Hirst seems to embrace commerce without question and tries to squeeze as much money out of the art market as he possibly can.
Also an artistic dimension is largely missing: Hirst never makes his own artworks himself, yet delegates – like a true corporate chef – the work amongst his disciples. He lets his paper-thin ideas be executed by others, and then calls it ‘conceptual art’. The underlying concept is yet so meagre, the execution often quite poor, that it is difficult to consider it true (conceptual) art. And when the art objects themselves are sold for gigantic amounts of money, with it, the concept behind it flies out the window as well.
A more intelligent artist would use such art as the ultimate subversive means to criticise the growing commercialism of our current society, but of Hirst – who calls himself not an artist, but a manager, a businessman – it is difficult to believe such a thing. His art lacks subtlety to be that refined: Hirst’s artistic gesture is grotesque and clumsy, without any finesse.
Many would like to regard Hirst’s works as a critical answer to commercialism, yet he only proves himself to be a product of it. His art is no more than a sloganesque manifestation of very flimsy ideas, preferably as sellable as possible.
The cynical end of the exhibition, a true museum shop incorporated within the exhibition’s route, where t-shirts, posters, ceramic plates and serviettes with Hirst’s famous designs are sold, speaks volumes. The most unthinkable gadgets and objects are sold at mere pretentious prices: those who would like a skateboard imprinted with Hirst’s Spot Paintings will have to pay £480. Those who prefer a more ‘artistic’ object can purchase, for example, a plastic skull: price tag £37, 000.
The shop in itself leaves the nastiest aftertaste in the mouth, yet – ironically enough – proves to be one of the more interesting elements in the exhibition. The way in which mere commercialism is strived for here, says more about the abominable state of a certain form of contemporary art – and the sad leading parts which Hirst and Tate play in this development – than any other anti-commercialist artwork ever made.
[The exhibition Damien Hirst at Tate Modern, London, can be viewed all through the summer and ends the 9th of september 2012.]
Lisa Vanhaeren 
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