Monkdogz Artblog

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!