Damien Hirst: With Dead Head (1991)
[image source]
From The Floor cites two articles on Damien Hirst's painting show at Gagosian Gallery. The consensus? Warhol did it better.
Mark Stevens (NYMagazine):
Has Damien Hirst Jumped the Shark?
[...] this English artist’s celebrity is also an important social phenomenon,
one that provides a sharp portrait of both the art world and the larger
culture. Although his new exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery,
“Damien Hirst: The Elusive Truth,” contains paintings about fleshly
corruption rather than the famous coffin-vitrines, he’s still pulling a
crowd. The opening was a feverish social scene; there was a line to get
inside the gallery. (Posters and a T-shirt emblazoned with a skull are
available.) And, of course, the fashionable showed up to express their
concern about death, corruption, and Western materialism. Right? The
art world is a comedy of manners, but this partying in front of images
of dissection tables was a little broad even for my taste. Hirst has
made art from dead flies, which may be why the buzz and social sheen
around his art remind me of the beautiful iridescence of the
bluebottle, Calliphora vomitoria, which eats and lays its eggs in carrion, open wounds, manure, and other decaying matter.
[...]
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