We went today to Lever House to take a peek at Damian Hirst’s show “School: Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity and the Search for Knowledge” and it was pretty fun to watch, I think that’s the best I can express it. I’m sure some people find it transgressive or even repulsive and at some level ‘deep’. Apart from the first ‘oh this looks cool’ and ‘kid on a museum excitement’, all I could really see were the red stamps on the sheep’s bodies: the staple of the artist as a brand. Hirst’s name is beyond the art world and has become the Nike ‘Swoosh’, a trademark that is now absolutely recognizable (his name, not the actual red stamp…), validated in and of itself and which brings with it great economic power.
All the rest, the sheep as students, the references to Magritte and Bacon, the shark as fear and the object of study, the clocks going backwards, life and death, etc, etc. is to me irrelevant. There is no real impact from any of this circular and unconstrained arguments. It is the fact of having his name attached to anything what causes a real impact within the world of economics and outside of the discursive realm related to art. That is where I think he’s really interesting (you haven’t forgotten about “For the Love of God” right?)
In the end, and this doesn’t hurt of course, he (or his assistants) knows how to make stuff look good: everything is clinically laid out and the formaldehyde filled tanks, the white bodies and the fluorescent lights give the lobby a very beautiful greenish glow, not unlike the facade of Lever House itself.
View some hi-res images and a short clip after the jump below.
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