Blue Tower Arts Foundation

News coverage of contemporary art is never very good. I’ve yet to hear a journalist actually speak about Damien Hirst’s work in any real detail. The most they can bother to do is talk about how controversial he is and his shark in the tank piece. I suppose the themes Hirst deals with don’t really make a good news story, and criticism is not really their job. The irony is the news media covers death and the fragility of human life all the time (“if it bleeds it leads”), but only from an objective distance. They don’t need to get philosophical about life and death, but do they have to make us cringe with their feigned seriousness?

Hirst is polarizing. The common result in an quick twitter search resulted in snarky comments along the lines of “Oh look, Damien Hirst didn’t know he knew how to paint.” (Typically he has had a staff of assistants see his projects through to the end) But the fact that this is somehow seen as antithetical to art merely points to the fact that people know very little about the history of art in general. Artists have always had studio assistants. Besides, we live in the post art-as-idea age anyway. Painting has little to do with making art when your perception of it is largely conceptual. For Hirst, this is certainly the case.

FYI, for all you twitter users out there, you can follow Hirst at @hirstdamien. Yesterday (Oct. 13th, 2009) he claimed in  a twitter post to have “kidnapped” Paris Hilton for ransom by downloading her image and burning to a disk. Perhaps this sounds silly, but what else is she but an image. He has claimed to kidnap someone that everyone has equal access to. So is it the claim that is silly or our perception of Paris Hilton’s existence? Or is it that Ms. Hilton’s perception of herself is the problem?
You can vote on whether or not you like his art at his blog.
Also read testimonials about him at his website. Here is a sample:

“Love the art and your concept. Can’t wait to get mine. I’ve been toying with the idea of being able to sell art on ITunes for .99 a pop. I think it is the future.”

Jeff, USA

Below is the second of a five part interview with Hirst. In it he talks about his relationship with British painter Francis Bacon.