The Wallace Collection housed at Hertford House in London is a collection of 15th – 19th century paintings, furniture, armory and porcelain collected mainly by the 4th Marquis of Hertford. Included amongst the Old Masters are paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Titian, Poussin and many more.

Damien Hirst has managed to arrange an exhibition of 25 of his latest works that opened this week and continues until January 24th 2010. He spent £250,000 (nearly $400,000) to help refurbish two rooms of the museum which including £60,000 worth of silk wall paper from France which will be removed at the end of his exhibition.

Hirst has been painting on his own, without anybody’s help since 2006 and this is the culmination of his efforts. The paintings in the exhibition titled “No Love Lost, Blue Paintings” are all predominantly deep Prussian blue. The motifs include Hirst’s well known signatures of skulls, shark jaws, dots, ashtrays and even butterflies.

According to the Guardian Hirst admitted that for a long time he had been afraid of painting, even though he admired painters more than other artists. “I was always very dissatisfied with my paintings; I always thought they weren’t very good. It was a big uphill struggle. But I suddenly thought, after everything I’ve been through, there was nothing to be afraid of. I did two years of absolutely rotten paintings and I wouldn’t want anybody to see them. They were just awful. For two years when I was painting them I thought, fucking hell, if I die now they’re going to come in here and go, ‘Oh, he fucked it up at the end. He was brilliant up to that point and then he did these and they’re awful.’ I was painting skulls and I couldn’t paint them properly so I put a fag in their mouth and a red jacket and it was like ‘Death having a fag’. And then I started painting the smoke and they were just awful. And then I told myself, just go back to the skull.”

Many of London’s critics feel the same way about the end result. The Time’s critic Rachel Campbell Johnston started her article “The paintings are dreadful” and gave one out of five stars for the exhibition. She continues scathingly, “these works are utterly derivative of Bacon (give or take a dash of Giacometti), but they completely lack his painterly skill. And their metaphors are as ham-fisted as the application of pigment.” Sarah Crompton of the Telegraph says “the paintings simply don’t pass muster”.

It is interesting that the Wallace Collection would host this exhibition. They have shown some modern and contemporary art over the years. The last living artist that they exhibited was Lucien Freud and there are several Francis Bacon paintings in the collection. Maybe there is a hope that a new generation of museum visitors would visit Herford House drawn by the Hirst exhibition and learn of the excellent permanent collection here.

Why Hirst would choose this venue is also of interest. Is he looking to validate his work with Old Masters? Does he want to compare himself to Francis Bacon, who he says influenced him? Or is it a prank, trying to get the public, critics and art establishment to go and see some mediocre paintings just because it’s by Damien Hirst? Is he brave to return to painting or should he have continued with his team assisted creations?

So am I going to go and see it when I’m in London later this year? Do I believe all the naysayers? Do I believe the critics? Or do I have to see it for myself? And if it’s as bad as they all say, will it have been a waste of time? Or will I learn something? Will I be a better and more knowledgeable person for having seen it?

All I know right now is that it’s given me a headache!

Tracey Emin (born 1963 ) is a British artist who is a leading member of the group known as the YBAs (Young British Artists) – although most are now in their 40s. They are conceptual artists who gained fame (or notoriety) in the 1990s for their shock tactic art. They were sponsored by Charles Saatchi at a time similar to these, when the contemporary art market in London had collapsed due to a major economic recession, and many commercial contemporary galleries had gone out of business.

Emin’s is known for her overtly sexual and provocative work. She creates paintings, drawings, videos, installations, photography, needlework neon and sculptures. White Cube who currently represents her suggests that in her work “she reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid and often excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and humorous.” Much of her work is said to be autobiographical with heavy focus on her disturbing sexual history.

Some of her most notorious works includes “My Bed” which was shortlisted for the Turner Prize consisting of her bed with yellow stained sheets covered in detritus such as condoms, cigarettes, underpants with blood stains and other garbage. Another is “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995” which was a blue tent which had names of everyone she has slept with appliquéd on the inside.

Her current show at White Cube has as its central piece a looped animation of 150 drawings that depicts a woman masturbating.

So this sexual exhibitionist; the ‘Bad Girl of British art” is now suggesting that sex is no longer her inspiration. In an interview with the Guardian Newspaper of London she said “It always was about sex, not money,” she said. “Sex was what held me in bed and got me out of it again in the morning. But now it’s fading fast. I don’t have the same craziness about sex that I had – I’m more interested in ideas.”

Having used sex as the basis for most of her work and gained fame/notoriety on the back of it, will there be anything left worth collecting for the impressive honor roll of superstars of the entertainment, business and art world who have long collected her work? Will the grown up Emin be as creative and revered?
The exhibition at White Cube Gallery, London titled “Tracey Emin: Those Who Suffer Love”, runs from 29 May to 4 July.

Ben Lewis is a British art critic, journalist and documentary film producer. He has been predicting the “armageddon” of the art world since 2006; a little premature, but he is now feeling vindicated and is taking every opportunity to tell everyone “I told you so”. He has such a negative spin about the contemporary art world that he was banned from the Sotheby’s Damien Hirst auction, a distinction that he is inordinately proud of and which he wrote about in the Evening Standard.

He is currently making a documentary film about the contemporary art world which is expected to air later this year. The working title is “Brave New Art World” a very jaundiced view of the contemporary art boom, based on statistics such as published by the Contemporary 100 Index, which suggests that the top 25% of the 100 highest selling artists increased in value by 3010% since 1984 and that 2000 percentage points of that happened between 2005 -2008. Interestingly, he was turned down for interviews by many of the people and organizations that he approached,

His focus is mainly on artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Zhang Xiaogang, Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami and dealers such as Larry Gagosian and museum directors such as Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate Gallery. His outlook is very pessimistic and he doesn’t offer an solutions, except for some banal suggestions, in a talk he gave late last year, of  “civil disobedience” such as “behaving like an artist – do really stupid things……and say that you are appropriating stupidity to critique it”.

I think he is right in that there will be changes to the art market, but I’m not ready to jump off the roof just yet.

Sensationalist art is a tough one to walk well.  Not edgy or pointed enough and people don’t get it or it doesn’t get the required reaction.  If it goes over the line too far it just becomes bad taste, which is in itself is very subjective and probably a very liquid measure changing from season to season, year to year.

Over the last few weeks in the run up to Easter, a very life like sculpture of Christ with his attendant crown of thorns and bleeding hands and feet sitting in a wooden electric chair has been exhibited in a cathedral of all place; la cathédrale de Gap (Hautes-Alpes) in the very South East of France near the Italian border.  The sculpture (one of three) is by British artist Paul Fryer titled “Pieta” created in 2006.  

The sculpture has been exhibited with the blessing of the Bishop of Gap, Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco and courtesy of François Pinault’s collection.  Protests of blaspheme has been refuted by the bishop who has said that he wanted the exhibition to “shock us into regaining the consciousness that a crucifixion was a scandal…. and that the electric chair (today) is no better than a crucifixion”.  The bishop also seems pleased with the volume of people, especially those who normally wouldn’t enter the hallowed halls of this catholic cathedral and national monument, who have been prompted to visit during Holy Week.

Paul Fryer (born Leeds, England 1963) currently lives and works in London.  He has had a rather interesting life so far and has gone from being an electro pop singer to a transvestite DJ and being recognized as the creator of several well received art-based clubs.  He worked at the Italian design house Fendi for five years as a musical director and has also designed books and other printed material for several artists, fashion houses and record labels as well as working as technical consultant for several contemporary artists. During this period he wrote a book of poetry, Don’t Be So…, which was illustrated by Damien Hirst and published by Trolley Books in 2001.

Damien Hirst also owns a “Pieta”.  The third one is for sale through the Kristy Stubbs Gallery in Dallas Texas where Fryer had a solo show in 2006.

I find it interesting that the Catholic Church isn’t above using sensationalist art in encouraging new and lapsed patrons to attend and probably adding to the much needed coffers.  In this climate we’re all doing what we have to do.  Go Monsignor Go!