Encounters with Damien Hirst and the Art of Spectacle
Back in October 2011, I spent the opening night of White Cube Bermondsey standing beside Damien Hirst’s monumental pill cabinet, Neverland (2002). As I stared long and deep into those mesmerising rows of ceramic pills and flawless stainless steel, I realised that I had to write the first and only book about Hirst’s art.
Forgotten Promises weaves together seemingly disparate threads of critical theory and cultural memoir to construct a defence of Damien Hirst against his critics. From his rise to fame as one of the YBAs throughout the 1990s and his infamous diamond skull to the Sotheby’s auction and his turn to painting alone in his studio, criticisms of Hirst have remained the same: he does not make the work himself, it is all about the money, there are no new ideas and it is all about style over substance. In this work of narrative nonfiction, I chronicle my encounters with Hirst’s art, from seeing it on TV and in the newspapers as a teenager to real-life encounters as an art critic and a superfan. I respond to the most often-repeated objections with a deep dive into Hirst’s work and the theory that underpins it, as well as offering an account of how my obsession with Hirst, realised in countless exhibitions visited and articles written, has been the one constant in my intellectual life and how it has shaped my aesthetic theory.
I argue that, despite a career of shock and awe, Hirst is a traditionalist: his central concern is aesthetics and his ideas – life, death, religion, science – are nothing more than the timeless, essential preoccupations of art and philosophy. I respond to four major criticisms of Hirst and show how he has systemically interrogated the human condition with an aesthetic prowess and theoretical sharpness unmatched by his contemporaries. First, Hirst is accused of mindless repetition, but works like the Spot Paintings, are a metaphor for the inevitability of death and the futility of our attempts to cheat it with science and technology in a world where religion is no longer the opiate of the people. Second, his ostentations displays of wealth, in the diamond skull and the prices of his artworks, are considered to be against the true spirit of art, but, for Hirst, this is a critique of capitalism and our desire for the unreachable. Third, the use of assistants and an assembly line manner of production is thought to render Hirst’s work cheap and inauthentic, but it merely continues a noble art historical tradition at the same time as illustrating the reality of capitalism and commenting on themes authenticity and sincerity. Fourth, Hirst’s emphasis on spectacle over substance is seen to be a deconstruction of our obsession with appearances, especially beauty, and an attempt to reinvent the aesthetics of contemporary art for the twenty-first century.
In the final analysis, Forgotten Promises aims to demonstrate that much criticism of Hirst is due to a misunderstanding of his melding of the traditional with the contemporary, which is often mistaken for clumsy postmodernism or sheer banality. In final analysis, and when we look closely, it is plain to see that Hirst is responding to timeless themes with a contemporary aesthetic, which is the the proper occupation of contemporary art stuck within the framework of capitalism.
I’ve written about Hirst a lot, which you can see in my publications and my book, so here I’m just trying to consolidate my thoughts. Contact me if you want to know more. Or just click here to see loads of funny pictures.