When you look at a piece of art what thoughts pass through your mind? One of the first things I think of is what went into making it and how long did it take. Art is an amazing process: besides the making, why? When I look at Damien Hirst art I think the opposite: what little thought, effort, content, and the why usually has to do with making money. Besides isn’t it cheating if someone does the struggling and another claims the credit? The question of the validity of Damien Hirst’s art is the topic of my speech today.
The Spot Paintings
Rumors say there are over 2,500 paintings by Hirst with multi-colored spots painted on them. They are supposed to have something to do with pills and medications but I see an excuse to make tons of the same, unimaginative paintings—millions of spots costing millions of pounds. The canvases are in every size, shape and color not to mention the prints on paper which number in the tens of thousands. Was it such a good idea to begin with? Does it warrant endless replication like hydras? Are these paintings, or a recipe for printing money without getting arrested? I think they are no more than wallpaper (which he has made too of course).
The Spin Paintings
Not even painted really, the spin paintings by Damien Hirst are made by pouring paint into machines that splatter over rotating canvases; all in the name of art, or spitting out product, literally. And yet again, the output of these so-called paintings is measured in the thousands. I used to believe art was unique. These contraptions and formulas are just that: art by design, by strategy, not about creativity and inspiration.
The Diamond Skull
Damien Hirst made a sculpture with diamonds, the cost of which was announced far and wide. Well, for one thing he didn’t make it and on top of spending millions for 8,000 diamonds to glue onto a platinum skull, he had to pay the people to do the gluing. A Van Gogh cost £3.75 for materials and is priceless; Hirst rendered £8m worthless. So they wouldn’t be embarrassed, the gallery announced the skull was sold for $100 million dollars to a group including Damien Hirst himself, his dealer and possibly a collector. In other words, after a worldwide media blitz no one was convinced the skull was art, nor I.
The Shops
Damien Hirst opened two retail shops in London alone and another in New York in partnership with his art dealer. How can one person generate so much stuff to fill galleries, museums and stores all over the world all the time? The answer is they can’t. What suffers is the content or should I say the lack of content. In the end, is this art or just another form of trading football cards?
The Market Judges
In the past months alone there were at least six new Damien Hirst shows including three in London, and shows in New York, Zurich and Mexico City. Can any artist produce so much without affecting quality? From a public auction record of nearly $20,000,000 in 2007 many works have since gone unsold. The art of Damien Hirst seems more about gambling on ever increasing prices then about appreciation. Big business wins out over artistic expression.
Handmade
Damien Hirst has now switched to crude paintings said to be made by the artist himself. Funny that its news when an artist decides to make his own art. In order to fulfill all his commitments, Damien Hirst is flooding the market again but this time with art he makes himself. Can you really learn a new craft from scratch in your mid 40s and expect instant mastery? From the looks of the last exhibits, the answer is no. It goes to prove you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
SPOTS SPINS AND SPARKLES: IS IT ART?
The spot paintings of Damien Hirst may all look the same, like wallpaper or candy wrappers but if you look closely they are each somehow different. What I like most about these paintings is that when you look at them, no matter your mood or the weather, they make you happy. They are cheerful, colorful and make you think of birthdays, parties and good things. Funny enough though, they relate to the colors of medications we take when we are ill. But when I learned of this it made me think that these works that look like fun are really about how pills help us when we are sick—about how through science we live longer lives!
When I was a kid in New York they had a toy called Spirograph where you used these little plastic devices and pens to make perfect symmetrical drawings that made me feel like I was a better artist that I probably was. As a young child I felt a great power at being able to make what looked like professional drawings from a few plastic contraptions that made me feel I had skills beyond my imagination. Damien Hirst has created a giant scaled toy to make paintings that look like they were made by a curious child rather than a professional artist. These paintings spring from a machine created by the artist where paint is poured through and lands on a spinning canvas to make a psychedelic splatter sometimes with the images of skulls lurking underneath. It seems simple or almost like there is no art in the art! But when you look at the result it looks like something I’d really like to have on my wall and that is probably as good as any proof of good art!
For millions of dollars Damien Hirst bought like 8,000 diamonds and glued them to a skull cast out of platinum, a material that is more valuable than gold. Never in the history of art has anyone made a sculpture where the materials cost as much as an office building. When you think of art you think of canvas and paint, like a Van Gogh painting which probably cost as much as £3.70 to actually make. But Van Gogh would probably be a different artist if he knew about Lady Gaga, Madonna, and football players like Beckham who signed a contract to play in the USA for something like $250,000,000. The glittering diamond skull of Damien Hirst was something like if we held up a giant mirror to our society and took a close look at each other and ourselves. What we would see was a group of people obsessed by money, shopping, glamour and possessions. So how can anyone criticize something that only was a reflection of who we were? In the end, contemporary art is nothing but a way to look at our likes, dislikes, our passions and our dreams for the future.
Yes, its art and more than that it’s us!
Kenny Schachter