Story highlights
After a period of quiet, Damien Hirst has opened a new exhibition of his work in Venice
Comprising 189 works, the exhibition fills an unprecedented 5,000 square meters of space
Damien Hirst has been quiet for a few years now, and his star has dimmed – as have his prices. So at the age of 51, it seems it’s time for a little bit of reinvention for the British artist.
Hirst has never been short of self-belief. He has never done things by half. So the art world press was in Venice this week to find out what he’d do next.
The public relations people have been strenuously working to get us all there for several weeks now. One work, they told me, is over 18 meters high.
The exhibition has a wonderful and intriguing title – “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.”
It fills an unprecedented 5,000 square meters of space at the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana (the old Customs House) on the Grand Canal, buildings owned by the billionaire French art collector and Christie’s owner Francois Pinault.
Read: How gay artists expressed forbidden desire in code
Though neither has confirmed an amount, both Hirst and Pinault have evidently spent a huge amount of money mounting this show. In fact, this is quite probably the most expensive single art show ever put on by a contemporary artist.
But whatever the cost, we wondered: Would Damien Hirst sink or swim in Venice?
An ancient fantasy
I last interviewed Hirst in London in 2010 and he happily told me about this planned exhibition. I complimented him on the title – he has always been good at titles. It was “a kind of fantasy on a ship that went down,” he explained.
And that’s how it seems to have turned out: Hirst has let his fantasies run riot.
The exhibition is comprised of 189 works. The conceit is that he’s discovered the wreck of an ancient vessel in the seabed off East Africa that went down laden with treasures from diverse cultures – Aztec, Inca, Ancient Egyptian, Roman and others.
Hirst’s people have supplied extensive footage of artworks being salvaged. It’s all very exotic, very photogenic and helps embellish the fantasy.
The work that’s over 18 meters high turned out to be a black statue called “Demon with Bowl.” It rises impressively to the full height of the courtyard of the Palazzo Grassi. I almost got a crick in the neck marveling at it. You wonder how they managed to get it inside the building.
It looks as if it’s made of bronze, but in reality it’s made of resin. I couldn’t see any joins. It looks whole, but it simply can’t be – can it?
Read: A potted guide to art and drugs
A lot of the works – bears, lions, a sphinx – are encrusted with what appears to be coral. And yet it can’t be coral – this is all brightly colored, and real coral quickly loses color out of water.
Hirst knows this and is teasing us. He told the New York Times: “It’s all about what you want to believe.”
There are art prizes, and there is the Turner Prize, the enfant terrible of contemporary art awards.
Founded in 1984, the Turner Prize was designed to promote discussion about art in Britain by celebrating the most outstanding pieces made by a British artist each year. Thirty years on, it's as well known for its prestige as it is for sparking debate with polarizing nominations. (Damien Hirst's winning "Mother and Child (Divided)," a cow and a calf bisected and emerged in formaldehyde, was a tabloid sensation.)
But the controversy that surrounds certain works -- Turner-nominated or not -- says as much about the public as it does about the artists.
Historically, repurposing religious iconography has been a surefire way to scandalize due to enduring cultural taboos. When Andres Serrano displayed "Piss Christ," a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine, it was widely seen as disrespectful to Christians. It eventually earned the condemnation of conservative U.S. Senators and sparked debates around the issue of public arts funding. Twenty-four years later, French Catholic fundamentalists destroyed a print of of the photo on display in Avignon.
Though Serrano -- a Christian -- originally said that the piece had no specific political motivation, he has since suggested that it was meant to highlight the continued cheapening of the image of Christ, and the hypocrisy of those who twist the words of Christ to fit their own ends.
Marcus Harvey's 1995 portrait of child murderer Myra Hindley caused a stir when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1997. The portrait, made up of a child's handprints, created an uncomfortable juxtaposition between Hindley's crimes and the innocence associated with youth.
Protesters threw eggs and ink at it on the first day of the exhibition (aptly titled "Sensation"), and Hindley herself wrote a letter from prison imploring organizers to remove it from the exhibition because it showed "a sole disregard not only for the emotional pain and trauma that would inevitably be experienced by the families of the Moors victims but also the families of any child victim."
Chris Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary," a Black Madonna surrounded by cut-outs from pornographic magazines and elephant dung, was met with similar outrage, including the public scorn of former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when it won the 1998 Turner Prize. What was seen as simply another blasphemous attempt at provocation was actually a harsh look at the degradation of black women in modern society. (Like Serrano, he was also inspired by Christianity, having been raised in a religious household himself.)
What sets Turner-related controversy apart is the positive financial impact it can have on an artist's career, thanks to the award's lofty reputation in the art world. "However much they're getting (as a prize) is a drop in the ocean compared to the money that they're set to make after that," says Alexandra Kokoli, a senior lecturer on visual culture for fine arts at Middlesex University in London. "It definitely guarantees them far greater cachet and better prices at auction, whether they're interested in that or not."
But there is a negative side to notoriety. Tracey Emin's Turner-nominated instillation "My Bed" -- complete with an ashtray full of cigarettes, dirty knickers and used condoms -- sold for more than $4 million at auction, but some still consider her success illegitimate because of the controversy that has surrounded her work, and the celebrity it has inspired.
"(Emin) is not someone who worries about her finances anymore -- and that's really saying something for a contemporary artist ... but people assume she's over-valued in some ways," Kokoli says. "She's somebody who is very much begrudged her success because people in the art world and other artists feel she has had a lot more exposure than she deserves."
An artist doesn't have to dabble in sexuality or religious themes to bring about public outrage. "Tilted Arc," a metal wall installed by Richard Serra in a Manhattan plaza in 1981, was eventually taken down because the public thought it was nothing more than a disruptive nuisance. In 2003, Martin Creed's Work No. 227 -- a room in which a light turned on and off every five seconds -- also received harsh public criticism when it won the Turner Prize in 2001.
"What angers people most, whether they acknowledge it or not, is that notion of deskilling, that people are making money out of nothing," Kokoli says. "There is this big anxiety against a certain type of conceptualism that seems totally based on an artistic idea, and whose execution as an art work does not require any of the traditional artistic skills and techniques."
Arguments against deskilling aren't new. The Society of Independent Artists refused to include Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain," a standard urinal laid on its back, in an exhibition in spite of the fact that its constitution required it to accept all member submissions. Fountain and Duchamp's other "readymades" (his term for an everyday object positioned as art), sparked modern discussions about what constitutes real art and, by consequence, a real artist.
What's controversial today may not be so tomorrow. While the female nude was by then a common subject for painters, even enlightened viewers were shocked by Édouard Manet's "Olympia." The presumed prostitute's almost defiant expression, directed at the viewer or an unexpected caller, and casual sexuality were considered pornographic at the time.
Almost 50 years later, Picasso's "Les demoiselles d'Avignon," which depicted prostitutes on display in a Barcelona brothel in his then-radical pre-Cubist style, was seen as outrageous and obscene for the same reasons. The idea of a woman brazenly showing off her sexuality in such a way was still unthinkable.
"Female sexuality causes problems still today, surprisingly. It's just another side of sexist culture," says Kokoli.
It's difficult to believe that John Singer Sargent's fully-clothed "Madame X" ever scandalized. But when it was first seen, viewers objected to the deathly pale skin (too morbid), the bare decolletage and perceived skimpiness of her outfit (the original had one fallen strap, which was later repainted), and the fact that the subject, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, was a well known socialite at the time. Instead of altering the image to hide Gautreau's identity, Sargent painted her exactly as she was.
Since then, public sensibilities and attitudes towards success have progressed to the point where these works have for most lost the ability to provoke outrage.
A return to form?
I felt the exhibition showed that Hirst’s imagination has been revitalized, that he did have something new to say. But after a time, I found the work a little repetitive.
Read: The afterlives of famous artists
My colleagues were more enthusiastic.
Two British art critics, Jonathan Jones of the Guardian and Matthew Collings of the London Evening Standard, both gave the show five stars.
Jones said he was “blown away,” and that Hirst back at his youthful shark-in-formaldehyde best. Collings was initially repelled, then became fascinated.
There was a sense that the artist had redeemed himself and his career.
What’s unquestionable is that Hirst is one of the only artists in the world with the wealth to have put this show on. Collectors have apparently already been offered some of the works at prices ranging from $500,000 to $5 million.
Will he recoup his investment? Time will tell.
“Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable” runs from April 9 to December 3, 2017 at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy.