ARMAGEDDON AGAIN

Shock ‘tactics’ employed by the art practitioner is nothing new, is in truth as old as art itself, but in the last two decades or so has just about become the only way to impress a market place which is epitomised by ‘serious’ collectors who quite literally buy only what other collectors buy.

This isn’t to say that the fairly recent wave of ‘Shock Art’ is intrinsically vacuous or bad, (putting cards on the table, then generally I’m a fan of anything which is genuinely capable of shocking us into viewing the world just a little differently), but Damien Hirst’s return to a rather inane series of paintings back in 2005 perhaps marked the end of this candid ‘ways and means’ of nudging our outlook on everything human. Indeed, when it comes to Hirst’s illustrious career it was perhaps ‘Armageddon’, a magnificent monochrome painting from 2002 composed entirely of dead flies, which in retrospect now marks the end of Hirst for me.

Having everything the aforementioned ‘The Elusive Truth’ show lacked, ‘Armageddon’ seems like an apt prelude to what has followed. On viewing, ‘The Elusive Truth’ is a sad example of ordinary, academic painting which might just have been interesting if the hand of the artist had actually been at work. This unfortunately however wasn’t the case. The series was executed almost in full by a team of assistants (although enthusiasts of the show are quick to point out that "Damien worked on every one") and it shows. Even worse for me is to witness this one time rebel artist of extraordinary works such as ‘Piss Christ’ and ‘A Thousand Years’ (where encased in one of his trade mark glass boxes, maggots feasted on the head of a dead horse - in time emerging as flies only to die themselves - zapped by an insect-o-cutor), employing such run-of-the-mill means.


Painting has had its many deaths and re-births, and a talented figure such as Hirst is perfectly placed to resurrect it again for us all. So what a shame, if he truly wanted to return to painting, and in doing so Hirst’s disciples will be turning on mass to do the same, that he didn’t return faithfully to its means of production and do it himself. As a painter I’m fully aware of how absurd most contemporary painting has become anyway, but with such high profile characters like Hirst pointing the way forward I dread to think, through his many imitators, just how meaningless it may all well turn out to be.