David Hockney, an artist, in his note to his own forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy, writes: “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally.” This prompts the question: who, or what, is Damien Hirst?
| Many of the works attributed to Damien Hirst are not in fact made by him. They are made by assistants. According to his own account, the best of his spot paintings are made by Rachel Howard, and he “couldn’t be fucking arsed doing it.” The BBC writes that Hirst "employs up to 100 people in a "factory" that works as a production line for his spot paintings." The platinum and diamond skull, For the Love of God, which was made by the London jeweller Bentley & Skinner, failed to make its reserve price of $50m and was purchased by a consortium including Damien Hirst. The exhibition of works by his own hand at the Wallace Collection was slated by art critics, including Adrian Searle in The Guardian, who called Hirst’s paintings “amateurish and adolescent”. Hirst rose to prominence initially as a curator of exhibitions. |  Damien Hirst is not Leonardo da Vinci |
 Leonardo was artist of outstanding phyiscal beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease. He possessed great strength and dexterity; he was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind; and his name became so famous that not only was he esteemed during his lifetime but his reputation endured and became even greater after his death. - VASARI | A patron is a person who commissions and supports other artists. Therefore, Damien Hirst is a patron. The importance of patrons in the evolution of art is without question: one only has to think of the contribution made by Ambroise Vollard to the inception of C20th art, and of the Medicis to the Renaissance. Associated with Vollard are Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Picasso; associated with the Medicis are Massaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo and Leonardo. The dialogue between patron and artist has been the inspiration behind art forever. One expects the artist to be a person of independence and integrity, but every artist knows the joy of working with another mind, the love of developing mutually shared ideas into their physical manifestation. |
| Hirst describes his own attempts at spot paintings as "shit compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant.” Hirst’s own eloquent rationale for this practice is that "Art goes on in your head”. He comes up with the idea of death – passes this inspiration to the artist and purchases the result. Like a good entrepreneur he is willing to distribute works to other patrons – he is famous for his Warehouse shows. It has been said of anyone who writes good sonnets that such a person must not only be in love with another person, but also in love with the sonnet as form. One distinguishing mark of an artist is his closeness to the physical process of creation. He or she cannot be separated from the materials or the labour. |  The brain reels at the thought that a man could have so much patience. - VASARI also tells us that in Milan Leonardo taught his assistant Salai a great deal about painting, and some of the works which are attributed to Salai were retouched by Leonardo. |
 Leonardo was one of the first to illustrate the problems of medicine by the teachings of Galen and to throw true light on anatomy, which up to then had been obscured by the shadows of ignorance. - VASARI | To be sure, some artists do use assistants, for there are many routine aspects to art that devour time. Historically, artists manufactured their own paints. Leonardo, who began his career as pupil to Verrocchio, also employed assistants; yet, though I am reminded of Vasari’s many descriptions of the sheer excellence of Leonardo da Vinci skills, and the claim that Verrocchio gave up painting when he saw his student excel him, it is Vasari’s opening description of Leonardo in his Lives of the Artists that is most moving: - “In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace, and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men behind, all his actions seem inspired, and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human art.” |
| Is it possible that Hirst is the only human being to have given his own name to all the works of the artists he himself employed? But there is another artist of divine origin who has come close. In The Illiad Homer attributes the shield of Achilles to Hephaestus, the god of smithies. It is a frequent theme of Homer’s work, for the humble armourers were too modest to take credit for their own divine creations. Hirst is the contemporary Hephaestus and to see a god he merely has to look in the mirror. |  Leonardo made designs for mills, flying machines, and engines that could be drive by water-power; and as he intended to be a painter by profession he carefully studied drawing from life. - VASARI |
