No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst

I was lucky enough to be able to play the flaneur yesterday (half day at work) and as such I took myself to the Wallace collection to see No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst.

For better or worse, I like Damien Hirst. I like the audacity of his business acumen and the way he taps into the art people want, toes the line between ‘meaningful modern art’ and pure decoration – then gives it away for price. ..

As you’ve no doubt heard, these blue paintings are Hirst’s return to… painting. Shockingly, no assistants were involved in the creation of these pieces – which explains why they:
A) look like they’re done by a first year art student
B) will probably sell for stupid amounts of money as they actually contain a fragment of the artist’s spirit.

‘First year art student’ dig aside, I enjoyed basking in their rothko-esq ability to engulf the viewer with their great expanses of block monochrome colour punctuated with gruesome skulls and harsh geometric shapes.

But what I particularly liked was how the ‘No Love Lost’ series referenced so many points of art history, particularly Hirst’s own phases revealed through the familiar dots, skulls, butterflies, and even the jawbone of a shark. He definitely doesn’t shirk away from having himself referenced to Picasso (the original member of the blue man group), Francis Bacon (through disfigured ‘meaty’ portraits) or the entire cannon of European art through placing his painterly work in the Wallace collection.

It’s these references (self, and other) that makes Hirst’s work so palatable, accessible, and in-turn so successful. For a Monday afternoon, it works fine for me.

What do you think? do you like them or prefer sharks in formaldehyde and diamond encrusted skulls? let us know in the comments

posted: November 24th, 2009 | by: tomagotchi | perma: link | tags: art, blue paintings, damien hirst, francis bacon, no love lost, painting, wallace collection | 3 Comments »

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