I am a huge admirer of Damien Hirst. Not of the art, which is rubbish, but of the sheer productivity and exuberance he brings to his life's work of fleecing rich idiots. "Oh Damien, you're a genius. Screw me over again." "Why not," he says, munching a bacon butty.
Global financiers, concerned about the markets and their stressed portfolios, can be relied upon to keep springing for yet another dead animal in formaldehyde, or some spots or butterflies or buckets of medicine bottles. The remorseless brainless repetition is surely part of Hirst's joke. Nothing cheered me up this week so much as reading about how well his auction of more than 200 works, each of them painstakingly produced in factories occasionally visited by the artist, had gone. Nearly $200m for this stuff? It's wonderful. I don't begrudge him a cent.
Best of all is the lack of deceit or embarrassment over what is going on. The man invites journalists to his factories. They look around, then talk of his stature as an artist without laughing: I'm not whether sure they are in on the joke, or the butt of it.
In London Mr Hirst presides over two large industrial units producing the butterfly-wing pictures and his photo-realist paintings. In the Gloucestershire countryside he leases two wartime aircraft hangers for the manufacture of the spot paintings, the spin works and the formaldehyde tanks. He also has a large workshop and an exhibition studio. More than 180 people work for him, creating Damien Hirsts. Two specialists oversee the formaldehyde unit, which on a visit in July contained four dead ponies, a wild boar, an upended cow and, in good "Godfather" style, a horse's head in a plastic bag.
In the workshop three women were talking about the "Hedgehog", a device attached to a Hoover. It is a small plastic tube with 20 holes cut into it in which are inserted cut-down cigarettes, some ringed with lipstick. Switch on the Hoover and, hey presto, instant cigarette butts for lot 134 (top estimate, £300,000). In another workshop, three fabricators were painting precisely measured round circles at regular intervals on a white background. These are the famed spot paintings that Mr Hirst says were inspired by playing snooker. The fabricators choose which color each spot is to be, and use ordinary household paint to apply the shades. The butterfly pictures are made by fabricators who are given the dimensions needed, but are otherwise left to themselves to choose the colors and designs they want. Having given his final approval--sometimes, one fabricator says, only by looking at a photograph--Mr Hirst signs and dates the back of the work.
I love it that the fabricators choose the spots' colors. (Could they not also choose the shapes? This would only add to Mr Hirst's stature, and the market value of the work.) He is selling batches of autographs at $200m a throw--with the added pleasure of knowing that a dead cow will soon be stinking out some plutocrat's palace. Please do not suspect me of sarcasm. I offer him my sincerest congratulations.
This man Hirst is the biggest hustler there is... impressive
And these mega-artists with their factories--like Hirst, Murakami, Kinkade--are only stand-ins for the current state of modern art. Is Jasper Johns any different? or Cindy Sherman? Only less the factory.
A little hint - they're called 'fabricators'. You couldn't make this up. Is this a Mike Myers movie?
Thank You Mr. Crook. Better still will be the diamond encrusted skull. Buy $30m worth of diamonds. Buy a skull. And have somebody glue them to the skull. Then ask $130m for it. That's a tidy profit if somebody buys it. And somebody probably will for $80m and brag about how they negotiated a $50m savings off the retail price (and the same in Mr. Hirst's pocket). I do like some of his stuff in theory, like a shark in formaldehyde. Not as fun to look at but not bad. But over and over again is another story. The skull is nice to look at too but not spectacular, not even close. I don't need to keep looking. And the spin art stuff may be the best joke of all as it's the kind of joke people make in art school but then never bother to make (because it's too ridiculous). Come to think of it I bet a good few did and are now lamenting that D. Hirst stole their idea. Poor things. Wonder what's next for him? Signed tie-dyed "art shirts" for $10,000 a pop? You can wear them while you bid at the next auction.
Related - recently saw a Jeff Koons documentary (like some but far from all of his stuff). One person was so impressed with Jeff Koons being a perfectionist. I imagine it's pretty easy to be a perfectionist when somebody else is doing the mind numbing work for you, spending untold hours in tedium for your approval. Pretty absurd.
JH Stotts - less the factory is indeed very different (for starters). You can contrast Jasper Johns and Cindy Sherman with Damien Hirst. I don't think you can compare them.
That Hirst's art has lost the relevance and impact it once asserted is in no doubt, but to focus on the production side seems irrelevant. We needn’t look further than Rodin’s assistant sculptors painstakingly creating mini-versions of ‘The Kiss’ over 100 hundred years ago to see the beginnings of Hirst’s ‘factory.’ I look forward to the next piece lambasting an architect for not actually laying a brick, rendering a wall, or glazing a window.
I particularly liked the question posed in the letters column of a UK newspaper yesterday. If Damien Hirst's corpse was pickled in formaldehyde
and auctioned off at Sotheby's, how much would it fetch ?
I don't care for Mr. Hirst
but remember
Michaelangelo did not paint the entire
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
so stop equating an artist's benevolence with how
much paint he gets under his nails.
But yeah, I agree on principle, screw the rich!
I'm always impressed by the audacity of Damien Hirst and the equal stupidity of the art world, particularly while banks are collapsing all around us. But it's all about confidence in the markets, isn't it? Bloody pathetic.
Like the clever ciccone, sheer protean will replaces talent Production or shall we say fabricators trump art.
Oh come on Clive! This Hirst guy's an amature.
Karl Rove pawns far more worthless crap than this on a daily basis. And sadly, the poor pay even more than the rich for his "masterpieces".
Thank you, Clive. I have a better understanding of your support for McCain and the Republican party; their governing is pretty much on a par with Hirst's art, and you are a connoisseur of con artists.
It's no secret that much modern art, especially scupture, is not created by the actual artist. Dale Chiluly is another example. These days many artists do nothing but "conceive" art, with others actually creating the piece.
This is why 50 years from now, works by Hirst and Koons will be viewed as amusing kitsch, not art.
Regarding the comment above comparing Hirst to Michaelangelo: methinks there is a vast, vast difference between (a) needing some assistance to cover one of the largest ceilings in the world with richly detailed murals and paintings, and (b) "conceiving" of putting colored dots on paper, then having someone else do it. One is art, the other is... product design.
Do not be deceived by the objects, for they are merely props to the grand performance of Mr. Hirst's comedic opera. People don't pay for his objects, they pay for a bit part on the stage that Hirst has created. Then they bring home the equivalent of a ticket stub, which they can put on display and brag about next time the neighbors stop in.
Warhol pioneered this, I believe.
Oh guys, this is contemporary art. It's a totally different mindset. Artist conceptualizes and then hires people to execute his concept like Maurizio Cattelan, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. Warhol had The Factory.
Hirst will be in the art history books as the greatest artist of his generation whether you like it or not. As a contemporary art collector, this is my subjective opinion. Well, one man's sublime is another man's abomination.
You guys will love this:
Something nice from Pottery Barn.
You guys will love this:
Something nice from Pottery Barn.
In a thousand years a shark preserved in formalydhyde will be a a shark preserved in formalydhyde. No paint, no easel, no skill or talent anywhere to be found. It's a shame you have to go back a thousand years to explain this to people.