The Incredible Journey, 2008, zebra in formaldehyde

How I cringed and laughed upon reading the following slice of snide made perhaps simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and/yet in perfect seriousness by Grayson Perry, the Turner prize-winning potter and artist, on his contemporary countryman, the BritArt-“conceptual”- world’s-richest-living artist Damien Hirst: “I fear his accountant has become his most influential artistic adviser.”

Our modern time and age starring the likes of economic volatility, nano-attention spans, metropolitan temporality and hyper-capitalism has placed an ungainly bull-ring around the unsuspecting nose of Art, and is leading it around in a manner so crude that statements like the above are not absurd, but regrettable.

Art has been fundamentally redefined, with artistic value being subject to deep biases towards the commercial potential of works in the market as well as the amount of marquee name hype generated. The formalistic appreciation and critical opinions do not weigh in on the same grounds anymore, and Art appears to be in the process of being removed further and further from the public realm and into that of the moneyed—who may or may not be led to collecting as an investment in a commodity more than as a purveyor/patron of artistry—bypassing the everyday onlooker, and spiraling into a state of affairs where anyone can appoint themselves a “conceptual” artist, and a stained bed and a stuffed shark have achieved fame and fortune.

Arguably shockingly (to idealistic me at least), this process of removal from the public is being championed and propagated by none other than the artist himself (as opposed to the artist being led/forced into the situation unwillingly). Obvious case in point: In September 2008, Hirst took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby’s directly by auction, by-passing his long-standing galleries. This auction surpassed all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst’s own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.

The Golden Calf, 2008, calf and gold in formaldehyde

Even without passing judgment on the pieces (always a sticky and subjective matter), this bypassing of the galleries and by extension, the public, leads me to infer that it is becoming entirely acceptable for Art to be created solely for commercial purposes, traded as one would stocks and bonds.

Leading art critic Robert Hughes has leveled similar accusations at Hirst, attacking him for “functioning like a commercial brand”. Are people like Hughes and me simply too.. vintage-hearted? To think that the treatment of Art in this manner is degrading? For me to think that when Hirst calls himself a “conceptual” artist, he is merely wanking off of the current public’s needs to be assaulted by superficial flash? Is it wrong that I am in disbelief that Lullaby Spring, a series of pills randomly glued onto metal cabinets, has been prized for its ‘rarity’, becoming the most expensive artwork sold by a living artist of its time, at $19.2 million to the Emir of Qatar? Are we being ungenerous and bitter to Hirst, who could be lauded for creating a new model of what it means to be an Artist, and expanding the scope and nature of Modern Art whilst mirroring larger societal mores in his dead bovine & marine life?

No.

I am not saying that good art cannot be a commercial success. I do not buy into the starving artist persona. I merely believe:

1) That good art should have soul and depth—it can shock by all means, but it should also move, on both the emotional and cerebral planes (and to me there are artists, and not just the traditionalists (Hirst’s ex-assistant, the painter Rachel Howard, scores far higher than him in terms of soul and depth) but even certain street artists (Banksy) and designers (Sagmeister) who are able to fulfill these criterion) (but perhaps the modern attention span is so short that it comes away fully satisfied by shock value?)

2) That the artist should be intrinsically tied to the process of its creation (if not there is too little separating the Artist and the Factory Manager).

3) That it should be shared with the public on some level irregardless of their perceived ability to understand the artwork (and not cloistered away into the bank vault of some hedge fund manager who masturbates to the thought of the incremental appreciation of his assets).

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991, tiger shark in formaldehyde

If Hirst were able to exhibit these very basic qualities consistently across his body of work, I would have no issue with his commercial success.

1) Yet his work is typically a mere spectacle, and then little else (despite their pseudo-smart titles that are cunningly engineered in a way that is often open to Postmodern interpretation).

By way of example, Hirst’s 1991 suspended tiger shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, has been termed a ‘tacky commodity’ by Hughes, though collector Charles Saatchi sold it for £8m in 2004. ‘It is a clever piece of marketing, but as a piece of art it is absurd,’ Hughes says. Supporters of Hirst’s work allege that it mirrors and subverts modern decadence, but Hughes counters: ‘Not so. It is decadence.’ (If you have any doubts about this, feel free to Google For the Love of God, and then exclaim the same verbally.)

(I can make an exception for A Thousand Years, where I do see concept as opposed to mindless decadence, but that is about it, for me, and that is definitely not a mark of consistency.)

2) Hirst requires and receives much help in preserving the animals used in his pieces. His famed Spot Paintings are not created on his own. He has a stable of 80 artists and support staff in his studios that help him churn out new works (much like Warhol, but, ah, that is another story altogether) on his pet themes of death and disease. Hirst himself has said of his spot paintings: “I couldn’t be fucking arsed doing it”; he described his efforts as “shite”—”The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.” He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, “‘make one of your own.’ And she said, ‘No, I want one of yours.’ Hirst goes on to say: But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.’”

LSD, 2000, limited edition print of painting

(Hirst has also been the subject of several plagiarism claims, some of which have been settled in out-of-court payments, but I don’t even see the need to go into that.)

3) As mentioned, the route of sales and clearly the purely monetary objective of Beautiful Inside My Head Forever. It is fine/wonderful to want to make money from your art. It is not fine/wonderful to make art only to make money.

Hughes is subtle and eloquent when he comments: ‘A string of brush marks on a lace collar in a Velázquez can be as radical as a shark that an Australian caught for a couple of Englishmen some years ago and is now murkily disintegrating in its tank on the other side of the Thames. More radical, actually.’

If Hughes’ words do not resonate with you and nothing I am saying convinces you, consider everything you have just read trash, if you can get past this—the most incriminating statement comes from the mouth of the horse himself—after his first exhibition, Hirst said, “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say ‘f off’. But after a while you can get away with things.”

But perhaps, just perhaps, I/we should not be so quick to shoot Hirst down as the hearse that has significantly contributed to the decline in the quality of contemporary art—as Grayson Perry puts it, depressingly, addressing the modern audience in a time of  ‘fluff economies and celebrity hype’ : “We get the art we deserve.”