i know the sculptors funnily enough and they only casted it, Damien had spent ten years thinking about this master piece and planning the story and how each product links with one another to say he didn't do much is an understatement on your behalf. Dont get me wrong i highly respect where you're coming from though
Hi, Spike. Thanks for the comment. Right, he was thinking about it for a decade. But, I've noticed that frequently when artists say they've been working on something for a very long time, it doesn't mean that they've been working hard on it a long time, but rather they just started it a long time ago. Thus, I've been meditating for over a decade, but, my combined hours of meditation wouldn't fill a week, or even a few days. Right, they work with casts. I didn't think there was a guy sculpting from his imagination. It's still a complex process that requires a lot of skill, especially to integrate it and pull it off at a high level. My solution, which is a little subversive, is to refer to works by Hirst or Koons as products from the "Hirst Factory" (referencing Warhol), or some variation: The Hirst Company; Hirst Productions; Hirst & Co.… I'm sure nobody would really like that, but it's accurate, and removes the problem. We openly acknowledge in an irrefutable way that he may be in charge, but he's not doing everything by a very long shot, and other people are very significantly involved. I would even refer to pieces as "objects churned out by the Hirst factory". It acknowledges what we are actually dealing with.
Duchamp 'chose' a urinal rather than 'making it himself' and this pushed art into a place where the world itself and the objects within it (manmade and natural) could be used as art - art became synonymous with life. The exhibit by Hirst is interesting for me, not for the works (as they are quite dead and lifeless) but the story behind the works - a ship sank and we brought the works from the sea bed. This fits our time of (crumbling perhaps) constructed realities, where we live out our lives believing ideas about the world that are simply made up. Man of cloth - wrapped in life, knows not what is, so creates what isn't - in order to survive.
Right. Of course Duchamp kicked this off. Just pause a moment, though, and notice that the urinal is a sterile, mute object. It is utterly impersonal and devoid of human presence. There is no sign or record of the exercise of the imagination, and none of its products. It is certainly in no way transcendent. Of course Duchamp would agree and that was his intent. In fact, his gesture was an attack on, and repudiation of art and artists. Warhol, Koons, and Hirst also present this aesthetic, where the human touch is completely obliterated, and where the art says nothing about the artist or his (in these instances) inner life. I've noticed that people who laud Duchamp do NOT listen to musical equivalents, such as some of John Cage's more outlandish "compositions" [I'm more likely to do so, actually]. Rather, they like music that has a personal feel, shows the imagination, elevates above the merely humdrum, kitsch, and life reduced to meat behind glass. I digress. If you like the idea, you could get the same idea from a poem, a short article, or a TH-cam video. But here we have 189 sculptures, costing over $50,00,000 on display, and all of that is certainly unnecessary to merely convey an idea that can be encapsulated in a few desultory paragraphs. What we really are seeing is a range of luxury items for the ultra-rich elite, and the "concept" is merely a thinly veiled pretext to curate the commodities. It is also an attempt by the artist to compete with Koons and McCarthy for putting on the most expensive shows, and making the biggest sculptures. It's a big dick contest of art. Hirst is trying to present himself as the greatest all time artist, holding championship belts in conceptual art, traditional fine art (sculpture in particular), and even artifacts. Some believe it. Some think the emperor is wearing a diamond encrusted, gold codpiece to hide his little weenie. A big question here is, "can you buy being the best artist". Hirst says "yes". Kanye West says "yes". Some say "no". No amount of money can make art. I wouldn't trade the whole exhibit for one of Van Gogh's better paintings.
Yes, as a quicker way to convey the idea of 'everything is made-up', I made a small painting of the Earth in the shape of a pyramid (or triangle) - titled, the world is triangle, I wanted to say that if all is made-up why not simply say the Earth is triangle and go with that, live that reality and perhaps try to convince others, start a religion, etc. But I'm me, and Hirst is (contrary to me) an artist with massive influence and power and so when he speaks of fabrication and belief in that fabrication, people listen. All those things you say about the work and it being for the rich are true, but at the same time, it is the idea of fabricating a story from which the works came that redeems him as a serious artist, at least to my mind. In an interview Hirst says something like - you choose what you want to believe - this is what we do all the time, regardless of any attachment to facts or truth. I think he sees art as more powerful (or at least an equal) than religion and this is an interesting position for an artist (especially one with unlimited resources perhaps) to be in. His press have communicated the exhibition as being within a post-truth world - a buzz word, that may or may not mean anything significant - and so for me it is this rather than the work that is of most interest right now.
You realize that he's been working on this for a decade, and connecting it to "fake news" or "post reality" is just an after-the-fact connection people are making to position the show as more relevant than just plain fantasy. The idea that we all believe narratives is nothing new, and the foundation of Postmodernist philosophy. In reality, I think believing this show is inherently important as art (as opposed to business) may be believing a fiction. And while it is true that any belief is a superimposition on reality, which cannot be categorized or defined in language, some beliefs are more ridiculous than others. A relative of my girlfriend, for example, believes that all the missing people were abducted by aliens. The whole "fake news" thing is a propaganda war on alternative news sources because Hillary didn't get elected. The "deep state" is fighting the Trumpet government and fighting for ideological control. These are loony and dangerous times. We need to not see everything as relative and fake, but rather try harder to be objective and honest. Anyway, you're free to like the show for whatever reason you like, but, for me the idea is fantasy, and I'm not a fan of fantasy. I prefer sci-fi, and maybe if he went in that direction I'd at least me entertained. And I do really think the idea of the show is just a thinly veiled pretext to showcasing Hirst's new luxury items for the extravagantly wealthy and tasteless. Anyway, thanks for expressing your ideas in a civilized and cordial fashion. We don't need to agree.
Yes, it is good that we may speak cordially and also that we may disagree, this is or can be constructive. I for one appreciate your position and am happy that there are people such as yourself who take this position. Hirst is after all art establishment and as such needs to be scrutinised and not simply seen as the contemporary artist of the moment incarnate. Though, I see his interest in belief and its fabrication, not as an after thought, to attach the exhibition to the times (make it more relevant) but as a fundamental element of his art practice - the business side of course comes into, much like a gift or albatross, whichever way you want to see it - but taken that he is in this position - it is perhaps even more interesting that he - under the weight of all the money and fame - can still speak artistically about the present scene, in all its complexity. Not to sound like his PR but if I can quote the words of the billionaire who owns the buildings in which the work sits - "The works do not fit into any conventional aesthetic category or canonical structure,” - François Pinault
Well, as you know, I don't think his work speaks to the present scene or its complexity. Hirst lives in a world of insane privilege cut off from the struggles of 99.9% of people, and this can cause a disconnect. His work reflects this strange lack of understanding of the less fortunate, which includes virtually everyone, and his methodology is that of a CEO in late capitalism, not an artist. And, sure, his work first into a conventional aesthetic category, the same ones Koons Michael Jackson sculpture belongs in: exquisite commissioned works by hired artisan. The thing that is unconventional is the money involved. Are you familiar with Kanye's sculpture, "Famous". If not, look it up. Ask yourself what the difference is between Kanye's work and Hirsts.
YOU ARE 100% CORRECT AND IT IS AN ARGUMENT I HAD WIHT MY TUTORS AT ART SCHOOL - I HAVE ALWAYS SAID THE PERSON WHO MAKES THE WORK IS AN ARTIST AND WE NEED A DIFFERENT WORD FOR THE PERSON WHO COMES UP WITHTHE IDEA AS I BELEIVE EACH PERSON SHOULD GET CREDIT FOR THIER PART. I MY SELF AM AN ARTIST AND AN IDEAS PERSON AND THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT SKILLS...
Hi Victor. The difference is that Mozart composed the music, but Hirst isn't composing the sculptures. He's doing the equivalent of hiring a composer to write music according to a theme he has in mind, but can't himself read music or play any instrument. You or I, if we had enough money, could hire some of the same people to make similar sculptures. No skills at sculpting are required. But Mozart had supreme mastery of music, and if we could clone him, he could play all the instruments in short order, if he wanted to. If we cloned Hirst, we'd have a bunch of managers running around with no one to do the work. Nobody thinks Hirst is a master of sculpture, or even a bad sculptor. He's just not a sculptor at all. Same with Koons. He's more of a CEO of an art factory. He tells others what to do, but doesn't have the skill to do it himself. He doesn't do artwork, he does boss-work. He's the boss. And bosses love him for that. Again, Mozart had the skill. This might not be such a big issue in other conceptual art, but so much of this show relies completely on the skills which Hirst does not possess at all.
Maybe Hirst, and anyone who admires him is taking less-is -more to another level? Less meaning no actual hands on talent ,and more meaning baubles for the wealthy and very ignorant. Who buys this crap ? . Maybe if en mass Hirst became blanked by the art world, private buyers, corporate buyers,any buyers at all things would be different,but that won't happen because the nature of the art market will make sure it won't and corporations willing to invest will always be there. As long as companies make millions and rich individuals get richer Hirst is their baby.It is partly their fault as much as it is the boy from Leeds. Interesting subject never the less.
Hi Eric, I watched your video and listened to your comments, but I think you're way too negative about Damien Hirst. Don't forget he, like most creative people, started out as a starving artist some 25 years ago, and worked very hard to get his ideas realized. And from his very first work onward, it was the idea that was central, and not necessarily the execution. He created his first works himself, but when the scale of his work increased he simply had to outsource the work to get it done. He did the right things at the right time, and now he's rich and famous. Is that bad? Would you like an artist to remain starving until he dies? I'm tasting a lot of jealousy in your story. Thing is we don't live in the past any more, where painters made paintings with paint, and sculptors made statues with stone. We live in a digital age where political leaders are spreading fake news, and where it becomes harder and harder to know what is real and what is fake. So in my eyes Damien Hirst is making the right statement with his fake excavated treasures. He reacts to the confusing world we live in. And he can only do a show of this size and quality BECAUSE he is filthily rich. Who else would be able to finance it? He's not such a bad guy as you try to make him in your video!
You can watch my second video in which I tackle my own feelings that I was too harsh and negative: th-cam.com/video/chujM1EEAi8/w-d-xo.html We do live in a time where sculptors make their own work and painters make their own work. Probably more than 99% of artists make their own work, worldwide. I do. Those that don't are rather few. The reason is that most artists not only can't afford to hire anyone to do their work for them, but wouldn't want to, because the other person can't manifest their inner vision. No matter how rich I were, I couldn't possibly pay anyone else to paint for me, because they not only wouldn't have my skills, but they couldn't paint my vision. I'm not sure "fake news" is really going to work for your side of the argument. It would be easier to argue that Hirst's show IS fake art news. Besides which, he insists it's true. So, while it can be very instructive to question fake news AND Hirst's show, accepting his show as a critique of fake news might be a bit of an obscuring rather than revealing of truth. It might be manufacturing fake news, a fake paradigm, a fake narrative, what have you. Did I ever say he was a bad guy? Am I jealous? No. I'm not jealous of wealth or success in art. You don't hear me bitching about Anselm Keifer, or Peter Doig, or Gerhadt Richter. Imagine if I were a novelist. I wouldn't be jealous of the novelist who made the most money, but whose novels I thought were overblown, and were actually written by a ghost writer: I'd be jealous of the one who wrote the best novel. My feelings about Hirst or Koons are more annoyance and disgust. For me, it's a bit like when Elton John got pissed off about Madonna getting an award for best performance when in fact she had been lip syncing. Sometimes you just gotta' call out the bullshit, and risk people accusing you of being jealous and otherwise a loser. But you wouldn't do that unless you knew that shit couldn't stick to you. Cheers, and thanks for commenting (minus a couple of the personal kinda' insults).
plagiarism: "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own" Damien Hirst is guilty of artistic plagiarism. The head shown at 0:18 is the work of sculptors of ancient Ife en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ife Good video
I thought I was a little hard on Damien in this video, so made a second one to present a bit of the other side of the argument, as well as expand on the topic://th-cam.com/video/chujM1EEAi8/w-d-xo.html Abusive and insulting comments will be removed. Don't waste your time or energy if you can't be civilized.
This is my third attempt to write an answer to your views here after having been to Venice for the Biennale this month and taken in Hirsts “Treasures” in the flesh.. I’m not generally a fan of Hirsts work although I do actually love “A thousand years” and “The impossibility..” . And though I’m not really a fan of conceptual art as a whole I was actually moved by a few other artists: Tehching Hsiehs 'Doing Time' , Roberto Cuoghis installation in the Italian pavilion and Philippe Parrenos 'Cloud Oktas'... But being a visual artist myself I often find conceptual works hard to ‘crack’ so I was surprised at how much I had to take away from this show and as I spent more and more hours wandering the extensive (and beautiful) halls of the exhibition the works and the installation as a whole gave me more and more to think about on the subjects of wealth, power, gluttony, fantasy, truth, fiction, myth, science, belief, toys, popular culture, music, mass marketing throughout the ages, authorship, art itself, time, museums, self-image, fascist/religious/monetary regimes, celebrity, plagiarism vs inspiration, immortality, mortality, value, substance, atoms, beauty, ugliness, wonder, disgust… holy shit.. there’s a lot more to this show than most critics care to mention. If you actually absorb the narrative that all these works create as you look at them and notice the little things: the ‘fake’ museum labels in the display cases, the contrast between the materials used and how they appear.. my girlfriend hated it. Predominantly because what I interpreted as a tremendous scope and ambition of different subjects tackled she saw as lack of focus and a badly conceived narrative (or lack of one entirely!) she also thought the sculptures where literally not very well realised and felt more like things created by a computer or video game design team rather than a sensitive human hand.. which is exactly why I loved them! Despite being visual artists who appreciate the gravity of an original and finely crafted image can we not also appreciate the realms which ambitious conceptual works like this can transport you to? Actually being at this show, surrounded by this staggering display of wealth and bombast and in the setting of these marble halls in Venice itself gives a powerful feeling and message.. if a heavily nihilistic one in the end! But then I’ve always been interested in the optimistic philosophies that can be birthed out the other side of nihilism. Anyway I hope the time I’ve spent on this comment might encourage you and others to reconsider this work and pieces like it and not just dismiss it because it’s worth loads (yet technically worthless), its full of other peoples ideas and he payed other people to make it …. Because that’s kind of the point… 😉
It sounds like you were in a frame of mind where you could find anything and everything pregnant with meaning. For example, it might be more interesting to you if the work were NOT particularly well made in terms of aesthetics. It might have been even more interesting to you had one of the pieces fallen over and shattered into bits. There are instances in everyone's life when they have a profound response to something vapid, even if just to the presence of the vapid itself. My argument, which you didn't address at all, is that Hirst can't take credit for the creation of the sculptural pieces, and it very well may be that the craftsmanship with which they were produced (even if it is comparatively plebeian) is much more appealing than the "concept", or pseudo-conceptual claptrap that issues from the likes of Hirst. Have you researched what Hirst says about his own work? His ideas about theft, and so on. Very uninspiring, annoying, dickish stuff. Certainly not anything I would consider philosophical. It's more of brash, bully, posturing. I'm not against conceptual art, however, in this case it's conceptual art masquerading as visual art, and Hirst trying to position himself as a sculptor (as Koons has), which he is not. He is someone whose medium is money, and has said so. He finances art spectacles which he largely nicks from other people and re-brands as his own. You might have a profound reaction to the result, but I think it was mostly just you.
I concur wholeheartedly with your analysis of the Hirst monstrosity. It cannot be denied that the work is great, truly great skill and craft... but just not done by Mr. Hirst himself. Mega blockbuster movies list most of the names of those involved in the production, all the way down to the caterers who fed the workers, and rightfully give the director credit for directing the workers. I would love to see a list of all the people and their respective skills who contributed to Hirst's recent mega-production... at the risk of diminishing Hirst in the eyes of his fans.
Koons actually thinks of himself as a sculptor working in the tradition of Michelangelo because of sculptures he's paid other people to produce. This is a weird psychological thing, where these CEO artist types convince themselves that they made something that they are themselves incapable of making. Acknowledging the actual people and their skill in producing the work would undercut that fantasy. Hirst, though, admitted that his jeweled skulls was made by famous jewelers with an appointment to the Queen, or some such nonsense, and that he was "surprised" when he saw the result. He didn't know what his art would look like, or the effect it would have, until it was delivered.| The big problem, which I could have articulated much more clearly, is that while Duchamp could cart a urinal into an exhibit and call it art, it's something altogether different to commission an elaborate piece of art, and then call it your own creation.
Yes, it can be denied that the work is great, truly skillful and well crafted. In fact, I would say the complete opposite. The modeling on the figures is really not good at all. In fact, THAT is my criticism of this work, not that Damien Hirst didn't to the physical work, but that he is incapable of distinguishing true skill from the work of amateurs. Not only is he incapable of doing the work himself, but he can't even see when it is done poorly by the people he hires!
We aren't disagreeing here, we are just talking about a different kind of skill, and if you paid attention to the video I address this towards the end, as in Hirst embraces the type of aesthetic that includes delineating every little detail, every scale on a serpent. Someone who makes their own art will not be so impressed by a mere show of realistic rendering. I believe this is what you are talking about. Nevertheless, to make an intricately detailed, realistic sculpture does require a great deal of skill, skill which Hirst does not have. Albeit, these days, a lot of the more difficult stuff can be done with computers and 3d printing, which still requires skill which Hirst does not himself possess. These skills take many years of training to acquire. Paul McCarthy, for example, uses an animatronics expert with over 20 years of experience to animate his sculptures.
What I am saying is that these sculptures are not realistically rendered. I was responding to the statement in the video that this work is 'extraordinarily skilled', and to Bob who said that 'the work is great, truly great skill and craft'. I disagree...these are not well made, nor are they realistically rendered.
What do you mean they aren't realistically rendered? Your argument is weaker than I gave you credit for. I thought you were saying there was no stylistic element, no sign of imaginative interpretation. Are you saying they botched the anatomy? Or are you saying that, y'know, a Medusa isn't realistic because nobody has snake hair? Either of those arguments if obviously false. So what the hell are you trying to say?
Art for the cellphone generation, taking photos and Facebooking them before they even bother to look, if they bother at all. I felt nothing except the feeling of stepping into a cultural void in the centre of possibly the most culture-filled and most beautiful cities in the world.
If so, what's your take on it? Do you feel that Damien's "heart and hand" was in every movement you made, which is something he said about the execution of all 10,000 plus of his dot paintings? Did you get any credit? Do you feel that your skills are something anyone could do if they had free time, and thus are negligible?
Hi Eric. Well... how about 3d printers. They turn virtual sculptures into real ones lacking the touch of artisans. I used to think like you till I read '33 artists' by Sarah Thorton. She convinced me that the 21st century artists need only their minds. They bring magical objects into this world by many means "including" their hands.
Thanks for commenting. But, no, dude, you didn't used to think like me. Gimmie a break. You have some catching up to do. First off, don't assume I am not familiar with contemporary art theory. I do have a Masters in art and my own thesis project was an installation. I've done conceptual art, appropriation art, and performance art (not to mention sculpture and photography). Your example of 3d printers - I've made 3d models in Blender and Zbrush - is relevant, but, who produces the file that is printed? Sticking with a printing idea, let's got with printing photographs. A machine can do it. But let's say I have an idea where I want to have an exhibit of photos of people arguing on the subway. I then hire the best photogrophers out there to go on the subway, take the pictures, and print them out. I look at them, choose my favorites, and exhibit the results as photographs by ME. I don't credit the people who actually took the photos. As it turns out, nobody cares about the idea of people arguing on the subway, but the photos themselves are spectacular. Can I really then take the credit? I never said there can't be works in which the artist does not produce the objects in question. Chris Burden did a sculpture in which steel beams were dropped from a crane into wet concrete. He didn't make the steel beams, and he didn't operate the crane. But the piece doesn't succeed because of the steel girders themselves or the operation of the crane. It's the combination, under his guidance. There's no problem for me there. People aren't admiring the girders themselves. Mike Kelley did sculptures which consisted of assembled discarded stuffed animals. He didn't sew the animals himself. But, again, it's not a problem. The success of the piece is the aggregate of animals, and how he hung them. None of them could stand on their own as artworks. In this show the problem is that the success actually IS dependent on the work - including the fundamental design - of highly skilled artists, artisans, and others creating conventional artworks that the "artist" himself is incapable of doing. This is where it gets to be a problem. The craftsmanship outshines the conceptual idea in the mind of Damien Hirst. However, I don't care if he did or did not personally assemble his Pharmacy installation, because the assembling thereof, and the manufacturing of the products is irrelevant to the overall message, shallow as it turned out to be [if a toilet can be a sculpture, a store can be an installation]. Do you see the difference? If my art is a mowed lawn, I don't need to mow it myself. But if my art is an elaborate sculpture, I do. So, again, it is one thing to use everyday objects that you don't make yourself, and it is another to hire people to make actual works of art, the success or failure of which is entirely dependent on THEIR skill. Koons made the same terrible blunder. True, he didn't make the Balloon Dog himself. However, that's not AS bad because the balloon dog is just a copy of a preexisting everyday object. It's worse when you have people make actual ART proper, which could stand alone without any conceptual underpinning, and take credit for it. Y'know, those white busts and whatnot Koons did that he compared to works by Michelangelo. If you accept that Koons is in league with MIchelangelo, and that means I need to make some mental breakthrough to reach your level of understanding, may I kindly suggest that breakthrough might need to be a lobotomy? Let me give you another analogy. I decided to do a show of cars for loners. They are one-seaters. Now, if I design them and someone else manufactures them according to my specifications, there's probably not a problem there. However, if I hire someone to design and manufacture them, there's a big, fat, problem. I am just being a CEO. Can you please tell the difference? Don't fall for siding with the CEO in this CEO Vs. Artist battle. The result is the elimination of artists, and instead a bunch of bosses ordering around trained artisans who have no control over what they make. Hirst is an art directer. He is the equivalent of patrons of the past who told artist what to paint, and even had their own portraits included in triptychs. But guess what. We don't remember them. We only remember the artists who did the actual work, because in doing the work, that's where the magic usually happens. Of course art is issued from the mind, not the hands. Look at poetry. This is not news. But when the success of the art in question is entirely dependent on what was done with hands, and tools, and expertise either with traditional or digital printing techniques, and the person taking credit for the work has nothing to do with those operations, and cannot perform them himself, he's a fraud. And if you buy into it, you are a chump. You are arguing with a straw-man argument, not my actual argument.
I agree with some of what you say for sure. It's hard not too. But I think this work is a great statement about religion and the creation of story. How ultimately we foolishly accept ridiculous stories from the past to substantiate ideas of existence, wrong and right, equality and other stuff. There's a million model makers and every other type of creative out there. Of course they need a pat on the back. But it's the story that counts and this is Hirst's story. Quite honestly I get bored of watching five minutes of credits rolling past at the end of Star Wars XVI unless I'm looking for someone's name I actually know or I'm waiting for that sneaky little shot they tag on the end. So well done Hirst. We need to inspire big thinking as we need some big ideas to deal with the problems of the time we are living in right now.
Darren Filkins Well, I agree with you at least partially about religion, though I think there's more to religion than non-religious people (including me) give it credit for. I also never read credits. And I'm fine with crediting Hirst with the idea, though, if you know much about his history, if it's an original idea, it might be his first. He's very fond of "stealing" ideas according to himself. If you steal the idea and pay someone to make it, well, for me, there's not a lot of art in it. But Hirst has compared making art to robbing banks, so we have a very different idea of what art is. Anyway, I think the idea is just a pretext to exhibiting a collection of sculpture, ostensibly by his hand (he has said his hand and his heart is in all of his dot paintings, so I assume he takes credit for the sculptures AS sculptures), and in order to position himself as a great "visual" artist as opposed to a "conceptual" artist, which are two very different things, as different as music and conceptual art.
Yes I think all artists rob banks, writers, poets, musicians. Take the material they've been exposed to and reinvent it. Most artists think they are being totally original and of course none of them are. Even Duchamps 'Fountain' (urinal) was not a pure thought. I think when considering a piece of art there are two routes you can take. You can't be in the picture and looking at the surface paint at the same time. Just like you can't taste a cake and look at the texture of the very same piece you are eating at the same time. As with Hurst's work. We can consider the talent of the the makers and the crafts people that made the objects. But thinking about what these objects mean or represent is something totally different, this process can only connect us to the artist that conceived them and his/her intentions and motivations.
Darren Filkins Hi Darren. Well, you could say metaphorically that all artists borrow from those that went before, and also from their contemporaries. Nobody makes art in a hermetically sealed bubble. However, when Hirst says "stealing" he means it quite literally, as in you see something you like, you take it, and run with it. It's not like Van Gogh stealing from Daumier, it's the kind of "stealing" that gets you sued for plagiarism. See my article about why the quote, "Good artists copy, great artists steal" has been completely misunderstood and used as a justification for plagiarism: artofericwayne.com/2017/01/06/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal-not-so-fast/ Where we see things differently concerning Hirst's show is you think the idea is paramount, and I think it's a thinly veiled excuse to showcase a bunch of commissioned sculpture, the success of which is entirely dependent on the skill via which they were executed. I never fell for the idea that visual art is about ideas, or is a conduit for sharing them. That is as ridiculous as thinking music is about ideas. Only some conceptual art purports to be about ideas, and it tends to be the least visually interesting, and deliberately so. Duchamp's ready-mades are the best example. But here, Hirst has made, or rather commissioned, highly aestheticized works. His show is very much about the aesthetics, and positioning himself as an all-time great visual artist and sculptor. Consider that Koons compares himself to Michelangelo because of the marble busts he commissioned Italian sculptors to make for him. Koons is Hirst's mentor, so to speak, and Hirst is trying the same sleight of hand that fools many. So, how would you feel if Koons and Hirst presented their shows as being produced by ,"Koons Art Productions" and "The Hirst Company"? Notice how true those titles are, and yet, how vigorously Hirst and Koons would oppose them, because they want all the credit. But if you just said that the "Hirst Art Factory" or name of choice produced the work, some of my criticisms would magically disappear. But that speaks an obvious truth that must never be spoken. There are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, and we must believe that Hirst alone is somehow responsible for the work of a large group of professionals. Consider that another competitor in this game, Paul McCarthy, employs an animatronics expert with over 20 years of experience to animate his sculptures. No credit is given. The first impression an uninformed viewer will have is that Paul McCarthy figured out how to make those sculptures himself. He has no clue, and probably not the kind of mind to get into the advanced computer applications, math, and physics of it. He has appropriated someone else's skill, and what impresses is the skill involved. Check out his giant sculptures of Bush sodomizing pigs. Or you can just looks at the new conceptual art masterpiece by Kanye West. It's the same fucking thing.
Eric Wayne - Hi Eric, I hear what you are saying, but I think it's ok for the world to work in different ways. I think you're upset because you're ideal of what an artist should be is not being gratified in Hirst's creations. A lot of crafts people are quite solitary characters and are quite happy to be employed doing what they do. They are not being stopped by Hirst in making their own art. If anything Hirst has created a wonderful platform for them to move onto bigger and better things. If you look at the artists studios from the renaissance period, many established painters used a workforce to paint many paintings and then gave it the finishing touches and the final signature to mark a personal seal of approval. I think there is room for many different ways to operate in a creative field. Ultimately art is about communication and there really is no wrong or right way to do that. If you don't like it then move on or make videos that voice your opinion. That's your prerogative. Cool. Bon weekend.
yeah i hate damien hirst's show and superficial theme. i only like the execution of the skilled sculpturers! thats so messed up that their work is recognized under Damien Hirst as the "artist". so messed up. awesome discussion.
just don''t be stupid, because i see here just envy of being in control or have a power over structures that's just the same imperelistic wish as the people that you criticize
rokasvaliauga Huh? What? I think whatever you are seeing is whatever you are projecting, and a reflection of you and you alone. Could be wrong, but, your comment is at best cryptic, and at worse a self-indictment on delivery. Cheers.
"It's extraordinarily skilled and polished" ...uhhhh, well is very shiny, but the sculpting skill exhibited in your first example is not even close to extraordinary. It's barely even ordinary. In fact, I have seen better work by students. Want to see extraordinary? Go look at a Bernini, or a Michelangelo, etc...The problem with this work is that no one can even see how badly the work is sculpted, including Damien Hirst himself.
You are complaining that the executing has no level of interpretation. I say the same thing. It's just a literal, realistic representation of the subject. THAT however requires years of experience Hist doesn't have, and neither do students, unless they have devoted themselves thoroughly to realistic rendering, perhaps in order to make props for movies and so on. Either way, you need an education to do this, and NO your average student can not realistically render a full figure in a dramatic pose, brandishing a sword, and so on, with proper volume, anatomy, and infinite detail. I think we agree why that isn't first rate art, but mere technical bravado, but lets no kid ourselves that any jackanapes can do fully realistic sculpture.
I am not complaining that the 'executing has no level of interpretation'. I didn't even say anything close to that. I am disputing your statement that these are "extraordinarily skilled" works, because they aren't.
From the photos and videos they look like they follow exacting detail, and I really, really doubt HIrst would hire people who couldn't sculpt (one way or another) realistically where realistic sculpting was required.
You do understand that one can add exacting detail to something that is not realistically rendered, right? Those are two entirely different criteria, as are the 'polish' and the craft of manufacturing. I keep saying very specifically that the modeling (rendering) is poorly executed. That is what you can't see, ironically.
Brian Craig-Wankiiri Can you give an example of where the anatomy or form is botched? Link to a jpeg. This discussion would be much more productive if I could see what you are referring to. Obviously I haven't seen them in person and may be being too generous in assuming they are tightly and accurately rendered. If they are as clumsy as you say, all the worse for his show. But provide some evidence if you can.
i know the sculptors funnily enough and they only casted it, Damien had spent ten years thinking about this master piece and planning the story and how each product links with one another to say he didn't do much is an understatement on your behalf. Dont get me wrong i highly respect where you're coming from though
Hi, Spike. Thanks for the comment. Right, he was thinking about it for a decade. But, I've noticed that frequently when artists say they've been working on something for a very long time, it doesn't mean that they've been working hard on it a long time, but rather they just started it a long time ago. Thus, I've been meditating for over a decade, but, my combined hours of meditation wouldn't fill a week, or even a few days.
Right, they work with casts. I didn't think there was a guy sculpting from his imagination. It's still a complex process that requires a lot of skill, especially to integrate it and pull it off at a high level.
My solution, which is a little subversive, is to refer to works by Hirst or Koons as products from the "Hirst Factory" (referencing Warhol), or some variation: The Hirst Company; Hirst Productions; Hirst & Co.…
I'm sure nobody would really like that, but it's accurate, and removes the problem. We openly acknowledge in an irrefutable way that he may be in charge, but he's not doing everything by a very long shot, and other people are very significantly involved.
I would even refer to pieces as "objects churned out by the Hirst factory". It acknowledges what we are actually dealing with.
Duchamp 'chose' a urinal rather than 'making it himself' and this pushed art into a place where the world itself and the objects within it (manmade and natural) could be used as art - art became synonymous with life. The exhibit by Hirst is interesting for me, not for the works (as they are quite dead and lifeless) but the story behind the works - a ship sank and we brought the works from the sea bed. This fits our time of (crumbling perhaps) constructed realities, where we live out our lives believing ideas about the world that are simply made up.
Man of cloth - wrapped in life, knows not what is, so creates what isn't - in order to survive.
Right. Of course Duchamp kicked this off. Just pause a moment, though, and notice that the urinal is a sterile, mute object. It is utterly impersonal and devoid of human presence. There is no sign or record of the exercise of the imagination, and none of its products. It is certainly in no way transcendent. Of course Duchamp would agree and that was his intent. In fact, his gesture was an attack on, and repudiation of art and artists.
Warhol, Koons, and Hirst also present this aesthetic, where the human touch is completely obliterated, and where the art says nothing about the artist or his (in these instances) inner life. I've noticed that people who laud Duchamp do NOT listen to musical equivalents, such as some of John Cage's more outlandish "compositions" [I'm more likely to do so, actually]. Rather, they like music that has a personal feel, shows the imagination, elevates above the merely humdrum, kitsch, and life reduced to meat behind glass. I digress.
If you like the idea, you could get the same idea from a poem, a short article, or a TH-cam video. But here we have 189 sculptures, costing over $50,00,000 on display, and all of that is certainly unnecessary to merely convey an idea that can be encapsulated in a few desultory paragraphs. What we really are seeing is a range of luxury items for the ultra-rich elite, and the "concept" is merely a thinly veiled pretext to curate the commodities. It is also an attempt by the artist to compete with Koons and McCarthy for putting on the most expensive shows, and making the biggest sculptures. It's a big dick contest of art.
Hirst is trying to present himself as the greatest all time artist, holding championship belts in conceptual art, traditional fine art (sculpture in particular), and even artifacts. Some believe it. Some think the emperor is wearing a diamond encrusted, gold codpiece to hide his little weenie.
A big question here is, "can you buy being the best artist". Hirst says "yes". Kanye West says "yes". Some say "no". No amount of money can make art. I wouldn't trade the whole exhibit for one of Van Gogh's better paintings.
Yes, as a quicker way to convey the idea of 'everything is made-up', I made a small painting of the Earth in the shape of a pyramid (or triangle) - titled, the world is triangle, I wanted to say that if all is made-up why not simply say the Earth is triangle and go with that, live that reality and perhaps try to convince others, start a religion, etc. But I'm me, and Hirst is (contrary to me) an artist with massive influence and power and so when he speaks of fabrication and belief in that fabrication, people listen. All those things you say about the work and it being for the rich are true, but at the same time, it is the idea of fabricating a story from which the works came that redeems him as a serious artist, at least to my mind. In an interview Hirst says something like - you choose what you want to believe - this is what we do all the time, regardless of any attachment to facts or truth. I think he sees art as more powerful (or at least an equal) than religion and this is an interesting position for an artist (especially one with unlimited resources perhaps) to be in. His press have communicated the exhibition as being within a post-truth world - a buzz word, that may or may not mean anything significant - and so for me it is this rather than the work that is of most interest right now.
You realize that he's been working on this for a decade, and connecting it to "fake news" or "post reality" is just an after-the-fact connection people are making to position the show as more relevant than just plain fantasy. The idea that we all believe narratives is nothing new, and the foundation of Postmodernist philosophy. In reality, I think believing this show is inherently important as art (as opposed to business) may be believing a fiction. And while it is true that any belief is a superimposition on reality, which cannot be categorized or defined in language, some beliefs are more ridiculous than others. A relative of my girlfriend, for example, believes that all the missing people were abducted by aliens.
The whole "fake news" thing is a propaganda war on alternative news sources because Hillary didn't get elected. The "deep state" is fighting the Trumpet government and fighting for ideological control. These are loony and dangerous times. We need to not see everything as relative and fake, but rather try harder to be objective and honest.
Anyway, you're free to like the show for whatever reason you like, but, for me the idea is fantasy, and I'm not a fan of fantasy. I prefer sci-fi, and maybe if he went in that direction I'd at least me entertained. And I do really think the idea of the show is just a thinly veiled pretext to showcasing Hirst's new luxury items for the extravagantly wealthy and tasteless.
Anyway, thanks for expressing your ideas in a civilized and cordial fashion. We don't need to agree.
Yes, it is good that we may speak cordially and also that we may disagree, this is or can be constructive. I for one appreciate your position and am happy that there are people such as yourself who take this position. Hirst is after all art establishment and as such needs to be scrutinised and not simply seen as the contemporary artist of the moment incarnate. Though, I see his interest in belief and its fabrication, not as an after thought, to attach the exhibition to the times (make it more relevant) but as a fundamental element of his art practice - the business side of course comes into, much like a gift or albatross, whichever way you want to see it - but taken that he is in this position - it is perhaps even more interesting that he - under the weight of all the money and fame - can still speak artistically about the present scene, in all its complexity. Not to sound like his PR but if I can quote the words of the billionaire who owns the buildings in which the work sits - "The works do not fit into any conventional aesthetic category or canonical structure,” - François Pinault
Well, as you know, I don't think his work speaks to the present scene or its complexity. Hirst lives in a world of insane privilege cut off from the struggles of 99.9% of people, and this can cause a disconnect. His work reflects this strange lack of understanding of the less fortunate, which includes virtually everyone, and his methodology is that of a CEO in late capitalism, not an artist. And, sure, his work first into a conventional aesthetic category, the same ones Koons Michael Jackson sculpture belongs in: exquisite commissioned works by hired artisan. The thing that is unconventional is the money involved.
Are you familiar with Kanye's sculpture, "Famous". If not, look it up. Ask yourself what the difference is between Kanye's work and Hirsts.
YOU ARE 100% CORRECT AND IT IS AN ARGUMENT I HAD WIHT MY TUTORS AT ART SCHOOL - I HAVE ALWAYS SAID THE PERSON WHO MAKES THE WORK IS AN ARTIST AND WE NEED A DIFFERENT WORD FOR THE PERSON WHO COMES UP WITHTHE IDEA AS I BELEIVE EACH PERSON SHOULD GET CREDIT FOR THIER PART. I MY SELF AM AN ARTIST AND AN IDEAS PERSON AND THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT SKILLS...
What to say of Mozart than Eric? He composed the musics but wasn`t able to play all instruments simultaneously.
Hi Victor. The difference is that Mozart composed the music, but Hirst isn't composing the sculptures. He's doing the equivalent of hiring a composer to write music according to a theme he has in mind, but can't himself read music or play any instrument. You or I, if we had enough money, could hire some of the same people to make similar sculptures. No skills at sculpting are required. But Mozart had supreme mastery of music, and if we could clone him, he could play all the instruments in short order, if he wanted to. If we cloned Hirst, we'd have a bunch of managers running around with no one to do the work.
Nobody thinks Hirst is a master of sculpture, or even a bad sculptor. He's just not a sculptor at all. Same with Koons. He's more of a CEO of an art factory. He tells others what to do, but doesn't have the skill to do it himself. He doesn't do artwork, he does boss-work. He's the boss. And bosses love him for that. Again, Mozart had the skill. This might not be such a big issue in other conceptual art, but so much of this show relies completely on the skills which Hirst does not possess at all.
Maybe Hirst, and anyone who admires him is taking less-is -more to another level? Less meaning no actual hands on talent ,and more meaning baubles for the wealthy and very ignorant. Who buys this crap ? . Maybe if en mass Hirst became blanked by the art world, private buyers, corporate buyers,any buyers at all things would be different,but that won't happen because the nature of the art market will make sure it won't and corporations willing to invest will always be there. As long as companies make millions and rich individuals get richer Hirst is their baby.It is partly their fault as much as it is the boy from Leeds. Interesting subject never the less.
Hi Eric, I watched your video and listened to your comments, but I think you're way too negative about Damien Hirst. Don't forget he, like most creative people, started out as a starving artist some 25 years ago, and worked very hard to get his ideas realized. And from his very first work onward, it was the idea that was central, and not necessarily the execution. He created his first works himself, but when the scale of his work increased he simply had to outsource the work to get it done. He did the right things at the right time, and now he's rich and famous. Is that bad? Would you like an artist to remain starving until he dies? I'm tasting a lot of jealousy in your story. Thing is we don't live in the past any more, where painters made paintings with paint, and sculptors made statues with stone. We live in a digital age where political leaders are spreading fake news, and where it becomes harder and harder to know what is real and what is fake. So in my eyes Damien Hirst is making the right statement with his fake excavated treasures. He reacts to the confusing world we live in. And he can only do a show of this size and quality BECAUSE he is filthily rich. Who else would be able to finance it? He's not such a bad guy as you try to make him in your video!
You can watch my second video in which I tackle my own feelings that I was too harsh and negative: th-cam.com/video/chujM1EEAi8/w-d-xo.html
We do live in a time where sculptors make their own work and painters make their own work. Probably more than 99% of artists make their own work, worldwide. I do. Those that don't are rather few. The reason is that most artists not only can't afford to hire anyone to do their work for them, but wouldn't want to, because the other person can't manifest their inner vision. No matter how rich I were, I couldn't possibly pay anyone else to paint for me, because they not only wouldn't have my skills, but they couldn't paint my vision.
I'm not sure "fake news" is really going to work for your side of the argument. It would be easier to argue that Hirst's show IS fake art news. Besides which, he insists it's true. So, while it can be very instructive to question fake news AND Hirst's show, accepting his show as a critique of fake news might be a bit of an obscuring rather than revealing of truth. It might be manufacturing fake news, a fake paradigm, a fake narrative, what have you.
Did I ever say he was a bad guy? Am I jealous? No. I'm not jealous of wealth or success in art. You don't hear me bitching about Anselm Keifer, or Peter Doig, or Gerhadt Richter.
Imagine if I were a novelist. I wouldn't be jealous of the novelist who made the most money, but whose novels I thought were overblown, and were actually written by a ghost writer: I'd be jealous of the one who wrote the best novel. My feelings about Hirst or Koons are more annoyance and disgust.
For me, it's a bit like when Elton John got pissed off about Madonna getting an award for best performance when in fact she had been lip syncing. Sometimes you just gotta' call out the bullshit, and risk people accusing you of being jealous and otherwise a loser. But you wouldn't do that unless you knew that shit couldn't stick to you.
Cheers, and thanks for commenting (minus a couple of the personal kinda' insults).
plagiarism: "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own"
Damien Hirst is guilty of artistic plagiarism. The head shown at 0:18 is the work of sculptors of ancient Ife
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ife
Good video
It's all appropriated, from ancient to contemporary culture.
I thought I was a little hard on Damien in this video, so made a second one to present a bit of the other side of the argument, as well as expand on the topic://th-cam.com/video/chujM1EEAi8/w-d-xo.html
Abusive and insulting comments will be removed. Don't waste your time or energy if you can't be civilized.
This is my third attempt to write an answer to your views here after having been to Venice for the Biennale this month and taken in Hirsts “Treasures” in the flesh.. I’m not generally a fan of Hirsts work although I do actually love “A thousand years” and “The impossibility..” . And though I’m not really a fan of conceptual art as a whole I was actually moved by a few other artists: Tehching Hsiehs 'Doing Time' , Roberto Cuoghis installation in the Italian pavilion and Philippe Parrenos 'Cloud Oktas'... But being a visual artist myself I often find conceptual works hard to ‘crack’ so I was surprised at how much I had to take away from this show and as I spent more and more hours wandering the extensive (and beautiful) halls of the exhibition the works and the installation as a whole gave me more and more to think about on the subjects of wealth, power, gluttony, fantasy, truth, fiction, myth, science, belief, toys, popular culture, music, mass marketing throughout the ages, authorship, art itself, time, museums, self-image, fascist/religious/monetary regimes, celebrity, plagiarism vs inspiration, immortality, mortality, value, substance, atoms, beauty, ugliness, wonder, disgust… holy shit.. there’s a lot more to this show than most critics care to mention. If you actually absorb the narrative that all these works create as you look at them and notice the little things: the ‘fake’ museum labels in the display cases, the contrast between the materials used and how they appear.. my girlfriend hated it. Predominantly because what I interpreted as a tremendous scope and ambition of different subjects tackled she saw as lack of focus and a badly conceived narrative (or lack of one entirely!) she also thought the sculptures where literally not very well realised and felt more like things created by a computer or video game design team rather than a sensitive human hand.. which is exactly why I loved them!
Despite being visual artists who appreciate the gravity of an original and finely crafted image can we not also appreciate the realms which ambitious conceptual works like this can transport you to? Actually being at this show, surrounded by this staggering display of wealth and bombast and in the setting of these marble halls in Venice itself gives a powerful feeling and message.. if a heavily nihilistic one in the end! But then I’ve always been interested in the optimistic philosophies that can be birthed out the other side of nihilism.
Anyway I hope the time I’ve spent on this comment might encourage you and others to reconsider this work and pieces like it and not just dismiss it because it’s worth loads (yet technically worthless), its full of other peoples ideas and he payed other people to make it …. Because that’s kind of the point… 😉
It sounds like you were in a frame of mind where you could find anything and everything pregnant with meaning. For example, it might be more interesting to you if the work were NOT particularly well made in terms of aesthetics. It might have been even more interesting to you had one of the pieces fallen over and shattered into bits. There are instances in everyone's life when they have a profound response to something vapid, even if just to the presence of the vapid itself.
My argument, which you didn't address at all, is that Hirst can't take credit for the creation of the sculptural pieces, and it very well may be that the craftsmanship with which they were produced (even if it is comparatively plebeian) is much more appealing than the "concept", or pseudo-conceptual claptrap that issues from the likes of Hirst.
Have you researched what Hirst says about his own work? His ideas about theft, and so on. Very uninspiring, annoying, dickish stuff. Certainly not anything I would consider philosophical. It's more of brash, bully, posturing.
I'm not against conceptual art, however, in this case it's conceptual art masquerading as visual art, and Hirst trying to position himself as a sculptor (as Koons has), which he is not. He is someone whose medium is money, and has said so. He finances art spectacles which he largely nicks from other people and re-brands as his own. You might have a profound reaction to the result, but I think it was mostly just you.
65 million up front investment, after its over, wait some years, then dump it all on Christi's or Sotheby's = net auction profits.
I concur wholeheartedly with your analysis of the Hirst monstrosity. It cannot be denied that the work is great, truly great skill and craft... but just not done by Mr. Hirst himself. Mega blockbuster movies list most of the names of those involved in the production, all the way down to the caterers who fed the workers, and rightfully give the director credit for directing the workers. I would love to see a list of all the people and their respective skills who contributed to Hirst's recent mega-production... at the risk of diminishing Hirst in the eyes of his fans.
Koons actually thinks of himself as a sculptor working in the tradition of Michelangelo because of sculptures he's paid other people to produce. This is a weird psychological thing, where these CEO artist types convince themselves that they made something that they are themselves incapable of making. Acknowledging the actual people and their skill in producing the work would undercut that fantasy.
Hirst, though, admitted that his jeweled skulls was made by famous jewelers with an appointment to the Queen, or some such nonsense, and that he was "surprised" when he saw the result. He didn't know what his art would look like, or the effect it would have, until it was delivered.|
The big problem, which I could have articulated much more clearly, is that while Duchamp could cart a urinal into an exhibit and call it art, it's something altogether different to commission an elaborate piece of art, and then call it your own creation.
Yes, it can be denied that the work is great, truly skillful and well crafted. In fact, I would say the complete opposite. The modeling on the figures is really not good at all. In fact, THAT is my criticism of this work, not that Damien Hirst didn't to the physical work, but that he is incapable of distinguishing true skill from the work of amateurs. Not only is he incapable of doing the work himself, but he can't even see when it is done poorly by the people he hires!
We aren't disagreeing here, we are just talking about a different kind of skill, and if you paid attention to the video I address this towards the end, as in Hirst embraces the type of aesthetic that includes delineating every little detail, every scale on a serpent. Someone who makes their own art will not be so impressed by a mere show of realistic rendering. I believe this is what you are talking about. Nevertheless, to make an intricately detailed, realistic sculpture does require a great deal of skill, skill which Hirst does not have. Albeit, these days, a lot of the more difficult stuff can be done with computers and 3d printing, which still requires skill which Hirst does not himself possess. These skills take many years of training to acquire. Paul McCarthy, for example, uses an animatronics expert with over 20 years of experience to animate his sculptures.
What I am saying is that these sculptures are not realistically rendered. I was responding to the statement in the video that this work is 'extraordinarily skilled', and to Bob who said that 'the work is great, truly great skill and craft'. I disagree...these are not well made, nor are they realistically rendered.
What do you mean they aren't realistically rendered? Your argument is weaker than I gave you credit for. I thought you were saying there was no stylistic element, no sign of imaginative interpretation. Are you saying they botched the anatomy? Or are you saying that, y'know, a Medusa isn't realistic because nobody has snake hair? Either of those arguments if obviously false. So what the hell are you trying to say?
Art for the cellphone generation, taking photos and Facebooking them before they even bother to look, if they bother at all. I felt nothing except the feeling of stepping into a cultural void in the centre of possibly the most culture-filled and most beautiful cities in the world.
If you listed all the hands that went into making the bronze sculptures
, it would be a very long list....and my name would be on it!
If so, what's your take on it? Do you feel that Damien's "heart and hand" was in every movement you made, which is something he said about the execution of all 10,000 plus of his dot paintings? Did you get any credit? Do you feel that your skills are something anyone could do if they had free time, and thus are negligible?
Art is to create. not to make money.
Hi Eric. Well... how about 3d printers. They turn virtual sculptures into real ones lacking the touch of artisans. I used to think like you till I read '33 artists' by Sarah Thorton. She convinced me that the 21st century artists need only their minds. They bring magical objects into this world by many means "including" their hands.
Thanks for commenting. But, no, dude, you didn't used to think like me. Gimmie a break. You have some catching up to do.
First off, don't assume I am not familiar with contemporary art theory. I do have a Masters in art and my own thesis project was an installation. I've done conceptual art, appropriation art, and performance art (not to mention sculpture and photography). Your example of 3d printers - I've made 3d models in Blender and Zbrush - is relevant, but, who produces the file that is printed?
Sticking with a printing idea, let's got with printing photographs. A machine can do it. But let's say I have an idea where I want to have an exhibit of photos of people arguing on the subway. I then hire the best photogrophers out there to go on the subway, take the pictures, and print them out. I look at them, choose my favorites, and exhibit the results as photographs by ME. I don't credit the people who actually took the photos. As it turns out, nobody cares about the idea of people arguing on the subway, but the photos themselves are spectacular. Can I really then take the credit?
I never said there can't be works in which the artist does not produce the objects in question. Chris Burden did a sculpture in which steel beams were dropped from a crane into wet concrete. He didn't make the steel beams, and he didn't operate the crane. But the piece doesn't succeed because of the steel girders themselves or the operation of the crane. It's the combination, under his guidance. There's no problem for me there. People aren't admiring the girders themselves.
Mike Kelley did sculptures which consisted of assembled discarded stuffed animals. He didn't sew the animals himself. But, again, it's not a problem. The success of the piece is the aggregate of animals, and how he hung them. None of them could stand on their own as artworks.
In this show the problem is that the success actually IS dependent on the work - including the fundamental design - of highly skilled artists, artisans, and others creating conventional artworks that the "artist" himself is incapable of doing. This is where it gets to be a problem. The craftsmanship outshines the conceptual idea in the mind of Damien Hirst.
However, I don't care if he did or did not personally assemble his Pharmacy installation, because the assembling thereof, and the manufacturing of the products is irrelevant to the overall message, shallow as it turned out to be [if a toilet can be a sculpture, a store can be an installation]. Do you see the difference? If my art is a mowed lawn, I don't need to mow it myself. But if my art is an elaborate sculpture, I do.
So, again, it is one thing to use everyday objects that you don't make yourself, and it is another to hire people to make actual works of art, the success or failure of which is entirely dependent on THEIR skill.
Koons made the same terrible blunder. True, he didn't make the Balloon Dog himself. However, that's not AS bad because the balloon dog is just a copy of a preexisting everyday object. It's worse when you have people make actual ART proper, which could stand alone without any conceptual underpinning, and take credit for it. Y'know, those white busts and whatnot Koons did that he compared to works by Michelangelo. If you accept that Koons is in league with MIchelangelo, and that means I need to make some mental breakthrough to reach your level of understanding, may I kindly suggest that breakthrough might need to be a lobotomy?
Let me give you another analogy. I decided to do a show of cars for loners. They are one-seaters. Now, if I design them and someone else manufactures them according to my specifications, there's probably not a problem there. However, if I hire someone to design and manufacture them, there's a big, fat, problem. I am just being a CEO. Can you please tell the difference? Don't fall for siding with the CEO in this CEO Vs. Artist battle. The result is the elimination of artists, and instead a bunch of bosses ordering around trained artisans who have no control over what they make. Hirst is an art directer. He is the equivalent of patrons of the past who told artist what to paint, and even had their own portraits included in triptychs. But guess what. We don't remember them. We only remember the artists who did the actual work, because in doing the work, that's where the magic usually happens.
Of course art is issued from the mind, not the hands. Look at poetry. This is not news. But when the success of the art in question is entirely dependent on what was done with hands, and tools, and expertise either with traditional or digital printing techniques, and the person taking credit for the work has nothing to do with those operations, and cannot perform them himself, he's a fraud. And if you buy into it, you are a chump.
You are arguing with a straw-man argument, not my actual argument.
I agree with some of what you say for sure. It's hard not too. But I think this work is a great statement about religion and the creation of story. How ultimately we foolishly accept ridiculous stories from the past to substantiate ideas of existence, wrong and right, equality and other stuff. There's a million model makers and every other type of creative out there. Of course they need a pat on the back. But it's the story that counts and this is Hirst's story. Quite honestly I get bored of watching five minutes of credits rolling past at the end of Star Wars XVI unless I'm looking for someone's name I actually know or I'm waiting for that sneaky little shot they tag on the end. So well done Hirst. We need to inspire big thinking as we need some big ideas to deal with the problems of the time we are living in right now.
Darren Filkins Well, I agree with you at least partially about religion, though I think there's more to religion than non-religious people (including me) give it credit for. I also never read credits. And I'm fine with crediting Hirst with the idea, though, if you know much about his history, if it's an original idea, it might be his first. He's very fond of "stealing" ideas according to himself. If you steal the idea and pay someone to make it, well, for me, there's not a lot of art in it. But Hirst has compared making art to robbing banks, so we have a very different idea of what art is.
Anyway, I think the idea is just a pretext to exhibiting a collection of sculpture, ostensibly by his hand (he has said his hand and his heart is in all of his dot paintings, so I assume he takes credit for the sculptures AS sculptures), and in order to position himself as a great "visual" artist as opposed to a "conceptual" artist, which are two very different things, as different as music and conceptual art.
Yes I think all artists rob banks, writers, poets, musicians. Take the material they've been exposed to and reinvent it. Most artists think they are being totally original and of course none of them are. Even Duchamps 'Fountain' (urinal) was not a pure thought. I think when considering a piece of art there are two routes you can take. You can't be in the picture and looking at the surface paint at the same time. Just like you can't taste a cake and look at the texture of the very same piece you are eating at the same time. As with Hurst's work. We can consider the talent of the the makers and the crafts people that made the objects. But thinking about what these objects mean or represent is something totally different, this process can only connect us to the artist that conceived them and his/her intentions and motivations.
Thanks for the video though Eric, I enjoyed it. It's stimulated some thought in me this afternoon.
Darren Filkins Hi Darren. Well, you could say metaphorically that all artists borrow from those that went before, and also from their contemporaries. Nobody makes art in a hermetically sealed bubble. However, when Hirst says "stealing" he means it quite literally, as in you see something you like, you take it, and run with it. It's not like Van Gogh stealing from Daumier, it's the kind of "stealing" that gets you sued for plagiarism. See my article about why the quote, "Good artists copy, great artists steal" has been completely misunderstood and used as a justification for plagiarism: artofericwayne.com/2017/01/06/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal-not-so-fast/
Where we see things differently concerning Hirst's show is you think the idea is paramount, and I think it's a thinly veiled excuse to showcase a bunch of commissioned sculpture, the success of which is entirely dependent on the skill via which they were executed. I never fell for the idea that visual art is about ideas, or is a conduit for sharing them. That is as ridiculous as thinking music is about ideas. Only some conceptual art purports to be about ideas, and it tends to be the least visually interesting, and deliberately so. Duchamp's ready-mades are the best example. But here, Hirst has made, or rather commissioned, highly aestheticized works. His show is very much about the aesthetics, and positioning himself as an all-time great visual artist and sculptor. Consider that Koons compares himself to Michelangelo because of the marble busts he commissioned Italian sculptors to make for him. Koons is Hirst's mentor, so to speak, and Hirst is trying the same sleight of hand that fools many.
So, how would you feel if Koons and Hirst presented their shows as being produced by ,"Koons Art Productions" and "The Hirst Company"? Notice how true those titles are, and yet, how vigorously Hirst and Koons would oppose them, because they want all the credit.
But if you just said that the "Hirst Art Factory" or name of choice produced the work, some of my criticisms would magically disappear. But that speaks an obvious truth that must never be spoken. There are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, and we must believe that Hirst alone is somehow responsible for the work of a large group of professionals. Consider that another competitor in this game, Paul McCarthy, employs an animatronics expert with over 20 years of experience to animate his sculptures. No credit is given. The first impression an uninformed viewer will have is that Paul McCarthy figured out how to make those sculptures himself. He has no clue, and probably not the kind of mind to get into the advanced computer applications, math, and physics of it. He has appropriated someone else's skill, and what impresses is the skill involved. Check out his giant sculptures of Bush sodomizing pigs.
Or you can just looks at the new conceptual art masterpiece by Kanye West. It's the same fucking thing.
Eric Wayne - Hi Eric, I hear what you are saying, but I think it's ok for the world to work in different ways. I think you're upset because you're ideal of what an artist should be is not being gratified in Hirst's creations. A lot of crafts people are quite solitary characters and are quite happy to be employed doing what they do. They are not being stopped by Hirst in making their own art. If anything Hirst has created a wonderful platform for them to move onto bigger and better things. If you look at the artists studios from the renaissance period, many established painters used a workforce to paint many paintings and then gave it the finishing touches and the final signature to mark a personal seal of approval. I think there is room for many different ways to operate in a creative field. Ultimately art is about communication and there really is no wrong or right way to do that. If you don't like it then move on or make videos that voice your opinion. That's your prerogative. Cool. Bon weekend.
yeah i hate damien hirst's show and superficial theme. i only like the execution of the skilled sculpturers! thats so messed up that their work is recognized under Damien Hirst as the "artist". so messed up. awesome discussion.
just don''t be stupid, because i see here just envy of being in control or have a power over structures that's just the same imperelistic wish as the people that you criticize
rokasvaliauga Huh? What? I think whatever you are seeing is whatever you are projecting, and a reflection of you and you alone. Could be wrong, but, your comment is at best cryptic, and at worse a self-indictment on delivery. Cheers.
"It's extraordinarily skilled and polished" ...uhhhh, well is very shiny, but the sculpting skill exhibited in your first example is not even close to extraordinary. It's barely even ordinary. In fact, I have seen better work by students. Want to see extraordinary? Go look at a Bernini, or a Michelangelo, etc...The problem with this work is that no one can even see how badly the work is sculpted, including Damien Hirst himself.
You are complaining that the executing has no level of interpretation. I say the same thing. It's just a literal, realistic representation of the subject. THAT however requires years of experience Hist doesn't have, and neither do students, unless they have devoted themselves thoroughly to realistic rendering, perhaps in order to make props for movies and so on. Either way, you need an education to do this, and NO your average student can not realistically render a full figure in a dramatic pose, brandishing a sword, and so on, with proper volume, anatomy, and infinite detail. I think we agree why that isn't first rate art, but mere technical bravado, but lets no kid ourselves that any jackanapes can do fully realistic sculpture.
I am not complaining that the 'executing has no level of interpretation'. I didn't even say anything close to that. I am disputing your statement that these are "extraordinarily skilled" works, because they aren't.
From the photos and videos they look like they follow exacting detail, and I really, really doubt HIrst would hire people who couldn't sculpt (one way or another) realistically where realistic sculpting was required.
You do understand that one can add exacting detail to something that is not realistically rendered, right? Those are two entirely different criteria, as are the 'polish' and the craft of manufacturing. I keep saying very specifically that the modeling (rendering) is poorly executed. That is what you can't see, ironically.
Brian Craig-Wankiiri Can you give an example of where the anatomy or form is botched? Link to a jpeg. This discussion would be much more productive if I could see what you are referring to. Obviously I haven't seen them in person and may be being too generous in assuming they are tightly and accurately rendered. If they are as clumsy as you say, all the worse for his show. But provide some evidence if you can.
Mr Narrator... you're asking for an imagination of his own. Don't waste Urself
Horror
TACKY TACKY TACKY NO WAYYYY SO TACKY BAD TASTE ABSOLTLY
Sounds like you have the beginnings of a song here. Put it to a melody.