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The Triumph of Damien Hirst

From:     Clem
Category: Art
Date:     17 September 2008
Time:     04:23 AM

Review:

 Why , simultaneously with the Lehman Bros. bank collapsing, and Aig being bailed out to the tune of 
80 billion, was Damien Hirsts auction so successful? Because unlike the investment bankers who 
gamble with air, Damien Hirst provides the market with unique commodities of superb quality. Having 
spent the last ten years having to grudgingly accept Damien Hist as a cultural phenomenon, the most 
original artist of his generation, we will surely now have to accept him as an economic one.
       Hirst is an artist in the Duchamp, rather than the Picasso, lineage.With his best work, he displays 
an aesthetic perfect pitch, a genius for loading extremely complex ideas into exquisitely beautiful 
forms of  ultimate simplicity. The constant repetition of ideas (hes had about ten good ones- nine 
more than any comparable British Artist) has given his recent work a high Edwardian Academic 
polish that is fantastically seductive.
       Unlike investment bankers, Hirst produces real things, and brings them to market. Hes a 
producer, not a consumer, and provides a key example for how to proceed into the next phase of 
Capitalism. Make something, make art, dont sit on your arse fiddling with numbers in an office in the 
City, waiting for the value of your property to rise astronomically, and expect to get  rewarded for your 
conformity. If you set up a factory, like Hirst, you have the right to succeed. If you steal money out of 
hot air, YOU WILL FAIL. 
        It turns out the artists were right all along, because they know how to make things and that is what 
we need right now.Unlike the philistine tossers who dont believe theres any link between culture and 
economy, in fact  the two are inextricably bound up together.The art world wins again!


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