Modern Art and Damien Hirst

I always ask myself why people are so enthusiastic about going to the modern art galleries. After watching one more exibition and blaming it in a long discussion we promise to give up going there anymore. However, after a couple of weeks we are coming back there again. Usually modern art gives us chaotic feelings and never indifference. Interest... which frames are closely intersect with a shock and sometimes incomprehension is the common “aftertaste” of new exhibitions. You can talk about art infinitely but dispute against it even longer. Never deny a fact that it is impressive however can you find something more inspiring than Matisse paintings or puffy Rubens women?

Every time I am coming to the art gallery, a fragment from a popular Russian film “What men are talking about” coming to my mind. When one a characters coming to the gallery and could hardly understand is “Toilet doesn’t work” a new exposition or just simply not working bathroom? Once, a similar story happened in my life as well. When I was in a Tate Modern with my Spanish friend (fashion student, by the way). We were discussing lively all displays and suddenly find ourselves in a room where at that time was a reconstruction. We didn’t realize this from the first time and started to talk about it in a way how real art critics do. Yet our conversation stopped with a laugh when a women in the gallery said that the room is closed for reconstruction.

After this moment I haven’t been in Tate for a long but when I heard that Damien Hirst exibition is opening I decided to visit it. I am a fashion student by the way and I have to be inspired by everything all the time and exibition of “enfant terrible” was a best decision. Hirst is a leader of an art scene and he is opening his “Murderme” gallery soon and that is the reason why I want to talk about him.

The first time I got acquainted with his art was a Metropolitan museum in New-York. I saw his work with a really deep philosophical name “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone living” which represented not such a “philosophical” huge shark in formaldehyde.

He impressed me. He impressed and shocked everyone. A feeling of slight disgust you can find after visiting an exibition. There is no need to go there especially if you have problems with a stomach. Divided in a half sheep or a cow in formaldehyde reminds of biology classes. Head of a cow with dead flies nearby reminds of unsuccessful libratory work.

He get a Turner Prize for remains of his exposition “Pharmacy”. That before closing in 2003 was a day version of New-York “Studio 54” with waitresses in Prada gowns that unfortunately doesn’t help a restaurant from a closure. The main point of this “piece of art” is in uncountable wardrobes with accurately placed pills on the shelves. Forcibly you feel that he collected this pills lying in a mental hospital. A sense of an installation is philosophical again. Wardrobe is a human body filled with medicine and pills and empty useless hopes. Hirst has a lot of similar art works, the only point is that pills are changed to diamonds, cigarettes and surgical instruments.

However, Damien is an amazing phenomenon in modern art, unique in its innovation and commercial grasp. On the Sothbey’s auction he got 198 million of dollars sold around 200 of his works. One of the work is “Unknown pleasure” where diamonds are accurately placed on the golden shelves. He thinks with an aim to get profit, as most of the artists nowadays. How George Harrison mentioned “everything irritates me in the modern art only because it is beginning with the word I AM”. That’s why the exhibitions of Hirst are seldom and auctions are going more often. If before the main aim of artist was to give an aesthetic pleasure, so now they create brand from themselves which is ready to sell for the one who will offer more. So I am coming to the same question again...why do we go to the art galleries? Why do we watch glassy dicks or skulls in diamonds? As Bansky said “modern art is a disaster zone”. Disaster, because so little artists want to give us something new.