Damien Hirst is at it again
plus 2 opportunities!
Hi! Today I’ve got two opportunities and some thoughts on my art nemesis Damien Hirst and his newest scandal. (I always think it’s better when your nemesis doesn’t know you exist, don’t you?) I’m checking out the Whitney Biennial soon, and the next newsletter will be about that, but I had a few things I wanted to get out into the world before then.
CALL FOR ENTRY: EVENT SCORES FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
While I decide what I want The Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center (a conceptual art project) to be, I’ve launched my first initiative. I am tabling at the Seattle Art Book Fair (May 11 - 12) again this year where I will be launching a new book, Event Scores for the End of the World.
1) The Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center (a conceptual art project) is my new thing! I am hoping to provide support and opportunities to other conceptual artists, teach some weird classes, and make cool things - or not make them as the case may be. (Conceptual art joke. Sorry.)
2) The best definition I’ve seen of an event score comes from the website of Fluxus artist Alison Knowles:
“Event Scores, involve simple actions, ideas, and objects from everyday life recontextualized as performance. Event Scores are texts that can be seen as proposal pieces or instructions for actions. The idea of the score suggests musicality. Like a musical score, Event Scores can be realized by artists other than the original creator and are open to variation and interpretation.”
3) I dunno if the world is ending, but it kind of feels like it sometimes. I’ll leave it up to you to define what that phrase means.
4) If you would like to submit an event score for the book or just learn more about them, please go HERE. There is no fee to enter! The deadline is April 8, 2024, at 11:59 pm Pacific.
STATEMENT OF INTEREST: THE DREADFUL VISITATION
In October 2022, Nature magazine published an article titled Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death. The bubonic plague epidemic in the 14th century killed about half of Europe, and many survivors had a genetic variant that allowed them to mount a more robust autoimmune response. This was great when there was an outbreak of bubonic plague but not so awesome when there wasn’t because that same gene variation is present in current-day sufferers of various autoimmune diseases (Like me!). It’s also problematic when dealing with other epidemics because - using COVID-19 as an example - one can have too strong of an immune response which can increase the chance of bad outcomes. As most people decide to move on from COVID-19, many autoimmune patients are left behind: still masking and avoiding crowded indoor situations. I will be creating an opportunity for a group of artists (including myself) to use the bubonic plague as a metaphor for issues around their autoimmune diseases. I don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, but while I wait for my co-conspirator, Sally Jablonsky, to finish grad school, I’d like to get a sense of who might be interested in participating in this project - The Dreadful Visitation. There will be online portions open to any artist with an autoimmune disease who wants to participate, but there will be an opportunity to submit a project proposal for something of greater complexity. I’d like to get a show together of 5 or 6 people willing to delve deeper into this subject matter. If you are an artist with an autoimmune disease, and you would like to participate in some way, please fill out this FORM. Please share with anyone you think might be interested! (Also, if you have an autoimmune disease and are not an artist, but have a cool idea for a proposal or just want to hang out during the online stuff, fill out the form!) I’m thinking proposals will be due sometime this summer with the actual show (or whatever) in 2025. I will keep you all updated on what’s happening in case you wanna check out our magnificent buboes. (That sounds dirty, but it’s not.)
DAMIEN HIRST IS A NAUGHTY BOY
Damien is at it again! Newer readers may be unaware of my vendetta against Damien Hirst, but he’s always giving me a new reason to complain about him. You can go here to read my initial diatribe, Damien Hirst: Art as Currency. If you just want the short version, here is the thesis statement of that essay. “A lot of Hirst’s career is about him trying to capture the profits that normally go to the folks in the secondary market. On one hand, I can’t fault him for trying. On the other, these <spot paintings> are being made in such quantities they become meaningless.” ALSO NFTS. Nfts are douchey as hell. Why? Crypto.
But Hirst has an actual scandal pursuing him aside from my outrage over his annoying business strategies. In the March 19th edition of The Guardian, Maeve McClenaghan reported that three of Hirst’s formaldehyde sculptures dated as being completed in the 1990s were actually made in 2017. I recommend reading the article, but here’s a quote that sums up Hirst’s position:
“Dates attributed to artworks are widely understood to refer to the year they were completed. However, in response to questions from the Guardian, Hirst’s company Science Ltd said the date that the artist assigns to his formaldehyde works does not represent the date they were made.
It said: ‘Formaldehyde works are conceptual artworks and the date Damien Hirst assigns to them is the date of the conception of the work. He has been clear over the years when asked what is important in conceptual art; it is not the physical making of the object or the renewal of its parts, but rather the intention and the idea behind the artwork.’
Hirst’s lawyers later clarified that while using the date of conception in the title was the artist’s ‘usual approach’ for formaldehyde works, he did sometimes use the date the sculptures were made. ‘The dating of artworks, and particularly conceptual artworks, is not controlled by any industry standard,’ they said, adding: ‘Artists are perfectly entitled to be (and often are) inconsistent in their dating of works.’”
I read a lot of articles about this, and they all just basically report the same information taken from The Guardian. (Like I am doing now.) It’s interesting to note that one word none of the articles mention is “fraud.” Probably because British libel laws are so annoying, but also because, “The dating of artworks, and particularly conceptual artworks, is not controlled by any industry standard…” I don’t think a lot of people are going to accept Hirst’s argument that he can just willy-nilly date things as he pleases, but what can anyone do about it? The contemporary art market is a black box where the rules are simply what people say they are. And Hirst, as one of its richest denizens, has a big say in deciding what those rules are. He’s gonna take a hit to his reputation, but there are always going to be those who just think he’s taking the piss out of the art world again. Unless he’s sued by a collector (FOR FRAUD) he may not see any legal ramifications for this. I’ve always thought of him as being scammy in a huckstery, “Have I got an AI-generated spin painting for you!” kinda way, but this crosses the line into something more unsavory.
Okay, enough of this annoying man! Go look at some good art!