I try to like his work. I really do. Honest.
I've seen some of his work in the past - spot paintings, vitrines of cows and sheep, huge rooms full of whale blubber. And because he's so controversial, I was anxious to see his latest show, a large retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern. Just in time for the Summer Olympics. You can see the piles of £££ now.
Hirst loves colour. Lots of it. So do I. But I'm not jazzed by his spot paintings. Falls flat for me. Strange because I love Gerhard Richter's colour grids and his latest abstracts. And I like Sol Le Witt's and Jim Lambie's work. Hmmm...
Hirst loves minimalism and order. So do I. He puts everything in nice, clean simple boxes or vitrines. These are cool. But it's the stuff inside that bothers me. That's his schtick though. He wants to make the viewer uncomfortable. Most of it just makes me nauseous. I believe I squinted and had prune face throughout the whole exhibition.
He is obsessed with life and death. So there are lots of dead animals and dead fish and dead butterflies. Well, there are some butterflies that are alive in one very humid room; but soon they'll die and maybe he'll use them in his paintings. There's a neon zapper in the next room just in case any get away. Beautiful from far away: colour-block paintings, some like stained-glass windows and exotic mandalas. But up close, you realise they're made up of real, colourful and iridescent butterflies. I have to remember to look up how long butterflies typically live.
Then there are the flies. Lots of flies. They're alive and buzzing around a dead cow's head. Oh right, there are dead flies too. It's this cycle of life he's so focused on. To me, most of it is just gross. OK the shark is cool because it's rare to see one so close - and not be eaten. But I can't look at the cows, whole or divided, and those poor beautiful sheep. I know that Prada has a vitrine (a goat?) in their collection with hooves painted in gold. I saw it in another show. I try not to think about it (mostly because I love Prada).
Hirst loves drugs and cigarettes. Not sure if he takes them himself but he's obsessed with pharmaceuticals. Goes back to the life and death thing. Can only cure people for so long; they eventually die. True but depressing. There's an awful lot of cigarette butts and ashtrays. Apparently, the act of smoking is symbolic for the cycle of life. Whatever. Those rooms smelled.
I must admit that I did like the medicine cabinets with the fake pills (exact replicas of real ones) especially the colourful ones. Very neat and orderly and aesthetically pleasing. But is there real meaning? Or is this just decoration.
And I actually did like the cabinets of fabricated diamonds. The silver ones, not the gold one which was just over the top bling-y.
Maybe that's it. The bling factor. The commercialism. The shock-and-awe. The sell-out. The overvalued skills. The diamond-crusted skull. A lot of it has been done before except he's putting more gloss and sparkle on top. It's like sugar coating but sometimes when you scratch the surface, there isn't much underneath.
