- Venue
- Serpentine Gallery
- Location
Pleased to meat you
Artist Damien Hirst is currently showing his private collection of works by other artists at London's Serpentine Gallery.
The works on show include some of the biggest names in 20th century art, including Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons as well as some of Hirst's YBA chums such as Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin.
But let's be honest this show is all about Hirst.
His buying power (a result of his incredible financial success as an artist) is on display here: Warhol's Electric Chair was bought for $3.5 million and Bacon's Study for a Figure at the Base of a Crucifixion cost over $12 million dollars.
We already know that Hirst's art made him incredibly wealthy but what does this collection tell us about the man himself?
His fixation with death, his love of dead animals and raw meat are all well documented and there is plenty of blood, guts and other grisly sights on display here.
And then there is sex. ‘Spot the Dogging' by Laurence Owen, a naïve painting of men having sex in the great outdoors, and ‘No limits' by Sarah Lucas, a car with a fist rocking in a masturbating motion in the front seat, are good examples of Hirst's schoolboy humour and innate desire to shock. But that's we have come to expect from the man who turned sheep-pickling into an art form.
Maybe this is where the problem lies, we know Hirst so well that nothing in this exhibition comes as unexpected. We have seen it all before and this is why the show fails to surprise or inspire.
Curiously, in a collection that celebrates the scary, the x-rated, the controversial and the frankly disgusting only a few work, such as John Currin's Bent Lady, are genuinely creepy. In Currin's painting, the grotesque element is understated, not so ‘in you face' and therefore all the more effective.
Another failing of this show is that it could have done with more work from up and coming artists to keep the whole experience fresh and exciting.
In the end the collection as a whole is big, brash but slightly hollow. Just like the man himself perhaps?
Saatchi can rest easy. His crown as ubber-collector and art giant is still firmly in place.
Fabienne Jenny Jacquet is a painter and part-time Fine Arts student at Central St Martins College of Arts and Design.
