You want the moon on a stick?
On Sunday morning I went to see the Damian Hirst exhibition at Tate Modern.
For those of you unable to visit, it’s a quite wonderful experience. There are old favourites, such as Mother And Child Divided, The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living and A Thousand Years:
But then there is also the room full of butterflies (In And Out Of Love), the perpetually floating beach ball (Loving In A World Of Desire) and that skull covered in diamonds (For The Love Of God), which is in a dark room in the Turbine Hall.
So that’s several of the most famous works of British art of the last twenty years, yet all I read about the exhibition before I went was a series of updates from my Facebook friends telling me how crap they thought it was.
Fair enough; I mean each to their own, and I can certainly understand how a perpetually floating beach ball might not be everyone’s cup of artistic Darjeeling (I should add that I went with my two small children, both of whom enjoyed seeing the inside of a cow), but I thought it was interesting how much you can do and still leave someone utterly unimpressed.
There was a goddamned shark in a tank! A room full of butterflies! Thousands of flies feasting on a dead cow’s head!
Meh.
The funny thing is, even though we often assess awesome things to be ‘shit’, we miss the wonder in everyday objects just as frequently. For example, have you ever considered all the things that go into the piece of paper that’s sitting on the desk in front of you? The tree that it used to be, the miles it’s travelled, the process that turned a chunk of wood into a perfectly white slice of paper, the shop that has been set up to make it easy for you to acquire the paper for less than a penny, the way that you can apply a million different colours of ink to it in minute detail…
And that’s just a piece of paper.
Not a dove captured beautifully in mid-flight, suspended forever in a tank of formaldehyde, whose ethereal majesty you could gaze upon in wonder as you marvel at the essential mysteries of nature and our place in the universe.
Then dismiss it as crap (to hundreds of people simultaneously, instantaneously, for free, across the planet, at the touch of a button) .
The Spectator cartoonist had it right: TAT Modern.
There’s poetry and wonder all around us, that’s true. (Personally, I’m perpetually gob-smacked by the colours of a winter sunrise over Clapham Junction. And trees! Trees are insane if you think about what they do every year.)
But as ad people, we’re *trained* to be perpetually cynical about anything that isn’t fresh and new (or at least we used to be. Take a look at this http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/thework/1132931/wispa-time-mis-spent-fallon/ and tell me what’s fresh and new about it.)
D’oh! I’ve only gone and fallen into your trap…
Its very fashionable to not like Damien Hirsts work, don’t you know.
Because he’s famous and rich must mean his art is shit.
Its all about pulling an unknown name out the hat and appearing knowledgable and arty.
Hahaha. Lovely funny clips. I find the sentence moon on a stick is a good way to judge if someone knows their funny stuff. Along with Pam Doove and her bottal oranduce.
For anyone who missed it, On the Hour is running on the wireless again. Leaves. Leaves. Leaves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007k3g0/On_the_Hour_Series_1_Episode_1/
Did you know that when caterpillars are inside a cocoon they don’t just lose a few legs, grow a couple of wings and become a butterfly. They entirely break down to a soupy sludge and then reform into a butterfly. Now THAT’S amazing.
When I was about 6 years old, I wanted to see a caterpillar change into a butterfly. So I caught one and put it in a jar with a leafy twig, carefully punching small holes in the lid with my dad’s ancient braddle to ensure it could breathe. I put it on the windowsill in the outside toilet to make sure that it wasn’t in direct sunlight. Then I promptly forgot about it. When I opened the jar two weeks later it had drowned in its own shit.
Same thing happens when the girls from the office go into the loo to get ready for a night out.
@SOG#7: What, they drown in their own shit?
About 30 years ago, in a shop window in Grimsby, (Rumbellow’s I think,) there was a beach ball perpetually floating on a cushion of air from a Hoover. Just saying.
I broke down to a soupy sludge this morning, but so far have failed to reform into anything.
I like to think that all soupy sludges are waiting to become butterflies.
And the Rumbellows thing is interesting. Hirst obviously likes to recontextualise quite simple stuff (the model of the human body, the statue of the boy collecting for the blind, a sheep). All I know is it made me smile in the context of the Tate. It probably would have made me smile in Rumbellows window, too.
My favourite Hirst work is a silver statue of someone who had cut their skin off and draped it over their arm. Very beautiful.
I suspect to enjoy Hirst you have to enjoy contemporary advertising. Ditto with Koons. Something about the irony, wit, slickness, hi-concept etc. Not sure whether this is a good thing or not!
When I saw the Hirst exhibition my enduring thought was that Hirst is a bit of a chancer. And that’s fine, power to him. But it did annoy me a little that the Tate really chug down the Kool-aid. I visited Mona recently in Tasmania and it was bloody brilliant. Not only an incredible collection in an insane building but their attitude to the art was so refreshing. On the little ipod things you carry around to learn about the art instead of waxing lyrical about the artist’s vision, they have a section called ‘art wank’ with a small drawing of a dick, that you can click on to read their (very down to earth) synopsis.
Hirst shits on Koon’s arms…it’s a nice contextual piece.
I must confess, I thought the Damien Hirst exhibition was crap simply because I was too drunk to view any of it properly and so completely missed the butterfly room and the diamond skull.