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Damien Hirst has defined
and drawn attention to a generation of young British artists. From the
controversy of Separated from the flock (a lamb preserved in a glass
tank, which was vandalized when included in the exhibition that Hirst curated
for the Serpentine Gallery in 1994, 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away'), to
the political storm surrounding the arrival of 'Sensation' in Brooklyn, his work momentarily redefined international expectations of British
art, before alienating the residual establishment art institutions,
including colleges, universities, museums and galleries and artists
themselves. |
literature
and food
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The trick was, British art had been in the
doldrums for many years, influenced largely by American abstract
expressionism, and prolonged in figuration and conceptualism by a few
isolated aficionados such as Hockney and Hamilton, neither of whom in
their different roles would rival the miraculous movements in post-war
German art, exemplified by Kiefer and Beuys.
The establishment-friendly tag BritArt
was a materialistic, nationalistic logo primed for City endorsement. The
new age entrepreneurs, followed by the old age luvvies, who loved to
drool in their success, decided that contemporary art was the
one form they might even appropriate without a need for too much
understanding, in order to find themselves a status. They bought objects
at ludicrous prices, one artist after another, rounding up artists like
Texel sheep, all for the sake of the sensation, of belonging, of owning
art. (And they still do, in this economic downturn, while curiously
observing the great distance between the rich and the poor, curious that
the poor still respect the rich, in a cloth-cap-doffing manner, just as
many of their Lawrentian predecessors did.)
As soon as real money was involved, quick
as lightning, different breeds started bleating, and the sleepy, fusty
art establishment, woke up to its success!
If Hirst does not get his hands dirty,
he sometimes got his fingers burned. When Pharmacy, the Notting
Hill restaurant, was launched in January 1998 amid great hype, its chef
was Marco Pierre White, and Hirst - who had a stake in the venture -
designed the interior. Bar stools were shaped liked paracetamol tablets,
the walls lined with glass cabinets, filled with pill boxes and bottles.
Controversy soon followed. The Royal
Pharmaceutical Society objected to the name of the restaurant, arguing
that it would mislead the public. In July 1998, Pharmacy was floated on
the stock exchange. Hirst and Matthew Freud, the public relations guru
who also owned a share in the restaurant, swapped their part-ownership
for shares in the Hartford Group, a company backed by property tycoons
Nigel Wray and Nick Leslau. The stock market valued Pharmacy at around
£7 million, making Hirst's stake worth almost £400,000.
Timothy Foster
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