Sir, – Aidan Dunne (Life Culture, April 5th) ruthlessly, and thankfully, exposes the arid dearth of compelling artistic creativity in Damien Hirst’s retrospective oeuvre of “con-art” bestsellers, currently running at the Tate Modern. He flags with some amazement the “major financial coups” which Hirst and his business manager have inflicted on a fickle, flighty and gullible art market. An unsuspecting public has to now endure the superficial pzazz and merchandising jamboree which accompanies the exhibition. Surely any recent art college graduation exhibition could easily trump Hirst’s repetitive conceptual dalliances.
Of course they’ll never get a look-in, as they crucially lack the Warhol entrepreneurial elixir: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art . . . good business is the best art.” Sadly, that’s the realpolitik of many contemporary art world movers and shakers. Simplicity sells, it seems, and repetitive simplicity on a grand scale sells very well, especially if it is laced with “very obvious motifs . . . relentlessly reiterated”. Hirst’s “favoured symbols of mortality, transience, death and decay” imbue the simplicity with some semblance of relevance, but is it worthy art, deserving of attention, assessment and, worst of all, adoration? Mr Dunne reminds us of how Warhol put it: “Don’t worry what they print about you, just measure the column inches”. Now I realise I’ve colluded in some small part. Mea maxima culpa.– Yours, etc,