I’ve never really got Damien Hirst’s work. Years ago when he was emerging as a name, I went to the show at the Serpentine Gallery. The friend was with got very excited about the sheep in formaldehyde. I didn’t. But then I always disliked the pickled dissected rabbits and other things in the biology lab at school.
The children seem to love Hymn which is displayed outside Tate Modern. To me it just looks like an oversized teaching aid. Informative, but please explain the art.
Makes an interesting photo though.
Isobel (and Cat)'s Blog 
I agree its weird but fascinating as well!
But I don’t think it is weird! And I am not fascinated. I don’t get it.
I don’t really care for it myself….perhaps it would look “alright” if located in the foyer of a teaching hospital for demonstration purposes but that’s about it. 😀
Pam
I am waiting for someone to weigh in and explain what it is we are missing Pam. But I am relieved to learn I am not alone.
Heck no…..that thing is borderline hideous…..LOL
Pam
You made me laugh!
Good!
🙂
It’s just creepy. Bizarre in its location. Agreed though that it makes for an interesting snap!
Is that the purpose of art? To provide an interesting photograph?
I would have to say IMHO the purpose of art is not to provide an interesting photograph. But we take interesting photos of art all the time. Creepy plastic torso thing there is not art IMHO, not art to me. I thought the carving on the public building was art and that the pictures you took of the carvings made very interesting photographs that I would never have seen. I consider photography an art.
I agree. But I think my photographs are more records than art. One day…
Could we have a picture of the other side too? !
When I go back! Actually I may have one from across the river. Not able to check now. Otherwise there will be loads online I am sure.
🙂
Reeeeally. This plastic thing says bloated and nauseating. And it’s superimposed on the soaring StP, of all things. Which expression is more inspiring: StP and all it’s been through, or this narcissistic disembodied enlarged unrecyclable — plastic thing. Symbol of our age. If you ask me. Nobody has. I’m saying anyway.
I’m trying to imagine what an “artist’s statement” might explicate about this, so I might have at least some insight into what this guy would like us to hear. Sorry. “Artist’s statements” usually make things worse, in my experience.
I’d rather see a tree. Or some object that takes the river, and StP’s, into consideration. Context, Hirst! Context!
Must admit Hirst has always seemed over rated to me. I love Tracey Emin, and think there are layers to her work which will continue to fascinate for years, though I have heard and read very lacklustre reviews of her current exhibition.
Your first paragraph made me laugh! And the last. 🙂
hmmmm… me, too, I’m afraid. juxtaposition doesn’t always work. just sayin’.
however, I AM intrigued by M. Hirst making a rather good living at his art. who’d he have to convince, to sell to, and HOW did he do it? Or did his “people” talk to their people?
He was an entrant terrible of the at world about twenty years ago. I feel his time has come and gone. For me, and as I say I have never got his work, the decorated skulls were when he tipped from edgy to kitsch, but maybe he would say he was being ironic. Saatchi bought his stuff.
Can’t bear Hirst – overated and doing nothing new.
His only skill is that of marketing.
I shouldn’t mind having that skill.
Likewise 😉
I went down to see the exhibition a couple of weeks’ ago and I reckon I would put about 25% of his stuff in the category ‘art’. I also found it ironic that photography inside the gallery was forbidden but one of the first things that you see is a picture of a young Hirst himself with the head from a dead body taken in a Leeds hospital. I’m sure that photography in the mortuary was banned…
Andrew
Aha, an art perspective. Can you tell us about the 25%?
Sure you are right about pix and the mortuary. And that photo sounds like something deliberately designed to shock. But unlike say, Duchamp, does it make us reassess our attitudes to art?