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In defence of Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst gets so buried under hype - his own and other people's - that it is sometimes difficult to remember that he is just an artist. To be sure, perhaps more than any member of that particular sub-culture, Hirst has succeeded in entering the popular mainstream, with all the benefits and disadvantages that seems to entail. But what of his actual art? How is it standing up (or should we say 'floating') after a decade of exposure?

First of all, Hirst has proven to be a paradigm of a certain kind of modern artist, one that seems in many ways to best reflect the nature of our times. He is polymorphous, polyglot, poly-everything, moving between different media and styles with a kind of freedom that previous artists couldn't grasp or perhaps didn't want. So he makes glass encased installations, cuts creatures into sections and suspends them in formaldehyde, takes photographs, makes films, records music, produces books and paints paintings. And that is only activity within the normally recognised domain of the arts. I will pass over here his forays into restauranteering, although such activities might well be encompassed by the concept of the 'total work of art'. But when all is said and done, Hirst still practices mostly within the familiar structures of the art world. Recently his New York show was deemed a great success, so declarations of his bankruptcy as an artist seem rather premature.

Hirst's early work already revealed his magpie-like ability to borrow, steal and generally re-invest with contemporary significance earlier art, be it Duchamp, surrealism, Arte Povera, American minimalism or the work of his contemporaries. He is undoubtedly most famous for his shark suspended in a tank, a commission from Charles Saatchi, his most loyal patron (at least for now). This work, which in many ways presaged a whole lot of other artworks which seek to collapse the gap between the world of representations (of images) and the real world, now seems iconic, to be rivalled only by his bisected cow and his sheep.

But he has also produced a disturbing series of glassed-in scenarios - a cross between the kind of transparent boxes to be found in Francis Bacon's paintings and Donald Judd's object-sculptures. These seem to capture very succinctly the alienation and deadness that is endemic to contemporary urban culture. Then there are his shelves of pharmaceuticals which serve as modern day Vanitas themes. Deftly co-opted for his restaurant, they apply the Duchampian idea of the ready-made to an aspect of our society that seemed to have been largely overlooked by artists.

His paintings - perhaps his bread-and-butter so far as income is concerned - often have titles drawn from the names of these kind of products, but actually they show Hirst at his hedonistic and commercially oriented best. The spot-paintings pick up on certain characteristics of 1960s art, and in the process turn out to be a marvellously vivid and light-hearted logo, one gratefully borrowed by British Airways for its youth-oriented subsidiary, Go. These works, and their relatives, the spin-paintings, are really very simple - and effective - decorations, which have quickly become the preferred visual backdrops to hip, cool, youth culture. Simon Morley

 

Support for Damien Hirst's work comes from the big names in contemporary art. Charles Saatchi, the former advertising mogul and now the foremost collector of YBAs, was a Hirst supporter from the start, and has spent a small fortune on his works. Saatchi describes Hirst unequivocally as 'a genius'.

Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, admires Hirst's appetite for risk. 'Damien is something of a showman,' he says. This has not always been easy in the intense climate of the 1990s. 'It is very difficult to be an artist when there is huge public and media attention. Because Damien Hirst has been built up as a very important figure, there are plenty of sceptics ready to put the knife in.'

Andres Serrano, another artist notorious for shocking work (such as his controversial Piss Christ), believes that although Hirst's art attracts attention because it is sensational, there is more to him than that. 'Damien is very clever,' he says. 'First you get the attention, then whether or not [Hirst's art] warrants any more time spent on it is another matter. Whether or not it will stand the test of time, I don't know, but I think it will.'

Hirst has also gathered support from high-profile media figures. Newspaper editor Janet Street-Porter, for example, has bought his work, and believes that he is to be admired for raising the profile of contemporary art. She described Mother and Child Divided, a bisected cow and calf in formaldehyde, as 'the art-world equivalent of the Oasis concerts at Earl's Court'. She admires the way in which Hirst's originality has brought art to an entirely fresh audience: 'He's bringing people into the gallery who'd never otherwise go.'

Some of Hirst's support comes from unexpected quarters. In the mid-1990s, Virginia Bottomley, then Heritage Secretary, refrained from calling herself a Hirst enthusiast, but nevertheless acknowledged his importance. Describing him as 'a pioneer of the British art movement', she said that Hirst's work was valid because art should not simply 'reflect consensus'.

Sheep farmers like him too. He has been thanked for raising the profile of British lamb, and is said to be 'a good judge of a sheep'.

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments to Hirst is that his work is never ignored. Like it or hate it, it demands a response. Ealen Wingate, director of the Gagosian gallery in New York, says that this is more true than ever of Hirst's latest exhibition. 'The critics are going to say it's a circus. They won't see its emotional and intellectual effect. But this is the show that, for a generation, will be considered as having thrown down the gauntlet: this is what art is about. This is what it could be.'

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