IdleRich
IdleRich
What do we think of this then?
http://towleroad.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/01/hirst_skull.jpg
http://towleroad.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/01/hirst_skull.jpg
For The Love of God
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
STN
sou'wester
It would have been cheaper to diamond-encrust the Sisters of Mercy logo, so he's obviously missed a trick there.
I think it's a very impressive diamond skull, though I can think of considerably better ways of spending however much it cost to make.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I think I read that it involves £12 million pounds worth of diamonds plus some platinum and paying someone to put it together - he's pricing it at £50 million pounds so from Hirst's point of view it seems like a good spend.
He's always been a bit goth though hasn't he? Look it's a cow's head being eaten by flies - it's about DEATH you see.
In this new exhibition there are also things such as cows and sharks being sliced in different directions. What's the point of that then? Well, I can answer my own question, the only point is too make money by selling to people who want part of the Hirst brand but it's certainly not art.
But the skull itself. There is something in the fact of making a piece of art that is worth more than pretty much all contemporary art just by virtue of what it's made out of that I find quite, I don't know, interestingly arrogant. I'd like to know if there is anything more to it than just sheer excess though, why is it called For The Love of God for instance?
Decoratively it looks quite powerful and I've heard it is more impressive (and blinding) in the flesh.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Preempting the predictable response?
STN
sou'wester
They are amazing to look at though. I don't think we should start on what is and isn't art because that can go on forever but I definitely consider the dead sharks and things 'art'. Would you say that cabinet thing with severed racoon paws in it was art or not? It was a kind of shrine-thing, don't know if you saw it.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear then. I certainly consider the dead sharks, racoon paws etc art (or that they at least can be art). What I don't consider art (or perhaps that's not quite right - what I consider pointless might be better) is simply riffing on the shark again by slicing it in a different direction purely to make money. I don't think that the new piece does anything that the old one doesn't, I don't see any point except to sell to someone who wants to buy something that is recognisably a DH.
STN
sou'wester
oh, that makes perfect sense now. The last thing I went to of his had goats or sheep being crucified and coming out of toilets and stuff. It was good. There is always a bit of a teen goth element to it (a goat! but crucified! with a syringe!) as you say but it's always so well executed. I do find it hard to find meanings beyond pure aesthetic pleasure in them (and the same goes for the skull), but I'm happy with that.
I'm with you IR. I used to genuinely admire Hirst's work but I don't think he's done anything decent, original or inspiring for around ten years now. This latest piece just seems vaucous in the extreme: an embracing of the art-as-commodity ethos in the most cynical and empty way possible. To state that it is a 'birth as death' seems to me over-reading it in the extreme: it is a commodity, produced to order to satisfy the market's need for commodity exchange and to flaunt a conspicious production/consumption relationship.
Most unforgivingly of all I think it is an inert and utterly boring piece which, alas, seems entirely in keeping with Hirst's work in recent years.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
To me, it looks like something Fifty Cent might have attached to the front of his stretch Humvee.
Well, who's to say he won't?
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Westwood's been doing the diamante skull thing for years now, for Hirst to do it harder, faster and louder is symptomatic of him and the rest of his coke-addled 80s Groucho mates, and god spare us the future chat shows they'll be appearing on reminiscing about how great the 90s were. Jesus they've even reproduced now.
I like some of his work but I can't and won't stand for what he represents, and I'd love to smash that stupid piece right into his smug little face, and, given the opportunity, I will. Preferably with it being held by the chopped off hand of Jude Law.
I like some of his work but I can't and won't stand for what he represents, and I'd love to smash that stupid piece right into his smug little face, and, given the opportunity, I will. Preferably with it being held by the chopped off hand of Jude Law.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well, I certainly think that that's what the sliced cows and sharks have become and of course the spot paintings were a deliberate example of that - at least this piece is a change of direction from all that although obviously it keeps with the death/skull etc theme. In fact I think that (although I assume he was joking) John Eden is right on the money with the goth thing, DH does seem as though he has the same childish kind of fascination with skulls and bloody syringes and stuff (they're cool right?) that leads moody teens to draw them on their pencil cases.
I don't really agree with that though. At the very least, as a decorative piece of art I find it striking and strangely visceral. Whether it goes beyond that I don't know (and knowing Hirst's track record I suspect not) but it has had some kind of immediate effect on me - I would actually like to see it propely I think.
STN
sou'wester
I find the £50 million price tag a touch irksome, simply because I think we're all expected to be awed by it, to the point where we all trail along to 'see what all the fuss is about'.
Jonathan Jones makes me feel like a total philistine, simply because I find so many of his remarks so laughable I wonder if I don't get them because I'm some kind of willing cretin or if they are just semi-meaningless and utterly pretentious.
I do think it will look bloody impressive, but in terms of a grand statement or any earth-shattering significance, I think Jones has a vested interest in hyping these sorts of things up.
Jonathan Jones makes me feel like a total philistine, simply because I find so many of his remarks so laughable I wonder if I don't get them because I'm some kind of willing cretin or if they are just semi-meaningless and utterly pretentious.
I do think it will look bloody impressive, but in terms of a grand statement or any earth-shattering significance, I think Jones has a vested interest in hyping these sorts of things up.
IdleRich
IdleRich
It's like that bit in a Don DeLillo book where he is musing on the fact that he paid $100million (or whatever it was) for an appartment - not because of the value of the appartment but because of the number itself. The more you pay the more you have paid and the bigger statement you have made. You pay as much as you can purely to have paid that much.
Hmm, didn't say that very clearly.
Well I agree about the spot paintings (god, is he really still producing them?) but I don't think the shark and the subsequent vitrines were commodity orientated in the way this latest piece is. You describe it as a piece of decorative art - is that so? Is it designed for decoration? If so, that changes the basis on which to base a critique I think. But ultimately no one can view this piece without the knowledge of its price tag. In fact, the price tag precedes or certainly eclipses any appreciation (pun not intended) of the work. I'm looking at money, is all. Perhaps Hirst has gone some way, using diamonds as a material, to acknowledging this (though not confronting it). I think it's this rather limp wristed acknowledgement of art-as-conspicious consumption that stops short of making any profound or illuminating or distoring or disorientating take on the issue (surely the central issue of the art market today?) that prompts my loathing. It both wants its cake and to eat it - to acknowledge the centrality of money to contemporary art production, that money may well be the 'death' of 'art' - but equally and simultaneously it cannot help but be a piece of the very thing it hopes to condemn (&thus it is no condemnation, in any meaningful way, at all).
