I Went To See Some Art.

On Saturday I went to see the Damien Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern. This year seems to have been a big one for art, and not solely as I work at a gallery and swim in Titian, Munch and new commissions and acquisitions but more cause Hockney happened and everyone got all excited and Joey Barton tweeted about going to galleries on his days off. 

I had not been fussed about the Damien Hirst, I saw a guy on Channel 4 News with a Gin & Tonic live from Inverness in the April sunshine selling the 'it’s not art' line quite well, whilst the studio pundit did a rather shit job of defending Hirst’s status. Plenty of people have been to see it but wasn’t until a colleague recently recommended it (and was genuinely surprised at my disdain) that I decided maybe it was an opportunity to really decide, for myself, first hand, where I stand on Damien Hirst. 

The exhibition got itself off to a good start without Hirst’s help but as my companions, two school friends, are some of my favourites to wander round galleries with. The first thing to hit us was young Hirst in Dead Head – the smirking art student pulls his head up to a severed head in an anatomy lab. It becomes increasingly obvious why this work opens the exhibition, more so than the Dead Cow Head In A Box (labeled by the artist as A Thousand Years) Dead Head expresses in an instant, the devilish look in Hirst’s eye, the cheek and the scandal, this is a man obsessed with the path through life, and the world after death. Not what happens after death, but how the human processes it and how we play with it in the world around us. Let's be honest, he's hardly the first artist to be intrigued by death and anatomy.

From the pocket of stagnant air seeping out of A Thousand Years – through to the life cycle of In And Out Of Love, (the butterfly room) on past the huge microscope slides like slices of whole cow cracked in two, complete with embryotic sac and calve deep inside – seeing Hirst’s work as a whole changes things. It’s no longer the wanker with the shark in a tank, 'or god, I painted dots on my bedroom wall at 15' (I did – I’m that much of a wanker myself, mine are more Sol LeWitt than Hirst mind, and I'd never seen either) but you see a fastidious obsession with form and continuation. My favourite work took me by surprise, Lullaby The Seasons, at first look a glittering series of display cabinets lined with various ‘every day’ pills on their long mirrored shelves, each of the four cabinets has a different colour scheme, and glancing at the name makes the obvious blatant. Pills for the seasons; pulling your year along one swig and swallow at a time. 

Rachel and I chatted on the tube hours later about whether Hirst was more valid than Miro - recently on in the same space in Tate Modern. In the exhibition I found myself unsure as we walked round whether I could compare Munch and Hirst; both men’s work is defined by deeply personal preoccupations.  I’m still not sure, but I do know as we looked round we ripped at ideas and were repulsed or intrigued with different works – so I’d say, although no Damien I don’t want to spend £1,800 on a poster in the shop the curator definitely wins – this is an exhibition. Like wandering through Hirst's mind, it is most definitely art to make such a performance of your inner ponders and curiosities.