More on Damien Hirst

Beauty is in the eye of the shareholder. Capitalism is based on the severing of meaning and price and the upholding of price as the ultimate form of meaning.
Damien Hirst is an artist who grew up through the tailend of Thatcher and Blairs Britain. His work is reflective of a time many now feel at least a little ashamed of. His Sotherbies auction coming the day before the global economy began to unfurl was supreme timing giving the event a historic placing no artist could have predicted. Hirst seems to have some sort of luck, perhaps even a knowledge no other artist does.
Damien Hirst seems to upset people by appearing to laugh at the art world, even by those who will accept the logic that art has no intrinsic value. Only that we give to it.
The government ran in to trouble when it described Sherwood Forest as 'an attractive investment opportunity for the timber industry'. Some things are sacred.
Society gets the art it deserves. It acts as a mirror to our morality.
I used to see the ire Hirsts work triggers as a slightly more jealous version of the ire incurred by Carl Andres bricks, Equivalent VIII. It is different though.
We saw Telecom sold off under Thatcher. Since thenwe have seen an incremental drifting of the goal posts of acceptability. The forests may not yet be acceptable but the Royal Mail is to many considered no longer an institution but a business. Somehow Hirsts work ruptures some sense of purity many will not tolerate. As if art may be bought but not in an incivilised way.
The dislike of Hirst is the dislike of the direction culture has taken.
My liking for him is down to personal history. If I had no connection to him I am unsure what I would feel. His best art I find hard to not like. Who can not find a shark impressive? He began by making art to compete with other cultural choices, Art that could stand up to Hollywood films.
He completely changed art in Britain. Much more than any other artist has in my lifetime. It has become like rock and roll. If you are too young to remember it was a dullish, cerebral thing that us oiks were barred from.
I hear what some say about him annd it feels wrong. If he sickens us it is a sickening of ourselves for falling for Blairs lies.
I don't see a rich artist I see the lad going to Jacob Kramer, our local art college, the lad getting turned down by St Martins.

Art is as meaningful as we make it.