Yesterday's NYT promotional bit on Hirst outlines his plan to showcase only spot paintings at all eleven Gagosian locations. Granted, it's fluff, but it is problematic because Hirst doesn't say much anything about his spot paintings as legitimate works. I mean, he has an eleven-gallery, one-man show, and the best description he has for them is that "they're not easy to look at". All coyness aside, doesn't that essentially mean they amount to Op-Art? And how does that justify their importance? Understandably, a lot of what he does is about making people uneasy, but optical uneasiness is quite different from social unease, the latter being what's hinted here.



Damien Hirst with one of his spot paintings, courtesy of The New York Times

Hirst says this is like "having a Museum Retrospective"... in eleven places. Hirst has a museum retrospective coming up next spring at the Tate Modern already. Gagosian's explanation for what makes this grand showcase worthwhile is that they "have entered into popular culture". Therefore, this Gagosian version is not at all retrospective, but rather Franchise Branding, to a T. The spot paintings are the (really expensive) gift shop accompaniment to the museum show: superfluous yet ubiquitous. 

Still, examining it under that lens is more interesting than "they're not easy to look at", and sparks an interesting thought process - one that may lead to questions about art that is fully absorbed into popular culture. But have the spot paintings actually done that, and if so, why?

There is obvious potential for interesting dialogue around this topic, and it IS taking place, just on the margins of art, not in the big box stores. I suggest reading Bourdieu's "The Field of Cultural Production" as a starting point.

I've heard the notion that some day Damien Hirst's spot paintings are going to reveal themselves as a form of subversive art. I believe I read that a while ago in his book On The Way To Work. Personally, I don't see it, and yesterday's article confirms my position. Their potential to reveal themselves as TRULY subversive would have to be in their commercial worth, first. Pictorially, they do not have much significance. So hypothetically, if the paintings did perform some subversive function, Hirst would have to figure out a way to completely DE-value the paintings after his death. The whole would take on the form of an intervention of sorts, or institutional critique, and the joke would be on the Gagosian brand and franchise for once and for all.