Damien Hirst Artist? What a Load of Bollocks!

If something shocks or is controversial, does that it make it art? No it does not. The Hirst effort on the left is entitled 'Pharmaceuticals' 2005. Judge for yourself. The Turner Prize has a reputation for attacting such pieces of garbage, and was won by Damien Hirst. Damien Hirst's work has drawn criticism from all quarters. Predictably, his work has been ridiculed in the tabloid press. When Hirst won the Turner prize in 1995 with 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', an exhibition he curated and which featured many of his works - including Mother and Child Divided (cow in formaldehyde) and Away from the Flock (sheep in formaldehyde) - the Conservative politician Norman Tebbit wrote in the Sun: 'Have they gone stark raving mad? The works of the "artist" are lumps of dead animals. There are thousands of young artists who didn't get a look in, presumably because their work was too attractive to sane people. Modern art experts never learn.' It is the pseuds and sychophants of the London Art scene that help promote this rubbish as art, and advance the career of Hirst.
A man I admire greatly is Brian Swewell - he tells it how it is and doesn't pull any punches. Brian, art critic of the London Evening Standard, was appalled by Hirst's Turner prize-winning work. 'I don't think of it as art,' he said. 'I don't think pickling something and putting it into a glass case makes it a work of art... It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. Indeed there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep. I really cannot accept the idiocy that "the thing is the thing is the thing", which is really the best argument they can produce. It's contemptible.' Good man Brian!