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From: blp Category: ArtExhibitionsTV Date: 04 January 2007 Time: 12:59 PM Review: On Hirst as collector, with the artist touring Melvyn Bragg around the new Serpentine show of art from his collection and around his £3m country pile purchase, Toddington, which will eventually house it all. Hirst, probably through no fault of his own, has become incredibly boring, sort of the Oasis of art, in a way that seems sadly inevitable for someone who can kind of float through life doing whatever he likes. 'I thought it would be good' seems to be his main rationale for the random shit he does now, like having an office chair carved in marble or whatever, and other than that the unpretentious good bloke conceptual artist shtick is wearing thin, if anything so bloated can be so described, and his jokes are just weak. Bragg seemed to spend the whole show laughing politely. The most interesting stuff here is anecdotal and seems to exist in fissures rather than being anyting anyone involved set out to show. There's Hirst's old friend Marcus Harvey talking with unmitigated disgust and weariness about the feckless little hair gel ipod boys he teaches on foundation, none of whom really seem interested in art, but all of whom want to be Hirst. There's Hirst's story about how he started collecting: a friend (could it be anyone but Angus Fairhurst?) needed to borrow money, but probably didn't have a way of paying it back, so Keith Allen suggested Hirst buy some of his work. And most interestingly of all, there's Hirst's svengali accountant/business manager who, we learn, was the real inspiration behind Hirst charging £1m for Hymn and thereby sending his general market value skyrocketting. Hirst seems genuinely uncomfortable about this and kept uttering banalities about art being 'more powerful' than money, but not seeming very sure. Dunphy is as sure about it, by contrast, as he is that Hirst's shockingly bad recent paintings containing religious iconography bespeak a beautiful religious sentiment - conjuring images in my mind of an El Greco Christ turning a moneylending Colonel Tom Parker out of the temple. Some hope.