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. |
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. |
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. |