Damien Hirst: Plagiarist

Damien Hirst has always been a deliberately controversial artist and one could say that the whole basis of his work is to provoke. Pickled animals and so forth, outrageously expensive items, sausages, a beach ball, ashtrays, bits of junk stuck together in a frame, and many more. It seems all he has to do is put it all together nicely and give it a weird or clever name and people will lap it up. Fair enough - whether or not you or I agree that this is art is irrelevant: he says it is, his customers agree and they buy it. *

But I think we may have rumbled him and his 'Spot Paintings'.

He's made squillions out of these. Moreover, he employs underlings to churn them out for him and he's flogged them for up to $3.5 million. But he pinched the idea from an unknown and no doubt underpaid designer at the Clarvan Corporation (see picture). They called the pattern 'Mardi Gras' and it was used on a variety of kitchen products manufactured using 'Vinylite' plastic from the Bakelite Corporation, part of Union Carbide. Perhaps Mr Hirst is making an ironic post-modernist statement. Or not. But luckily for Mr Hirst the Clarvan Corporation is now defunct otherwise he might be facing legal action for copyright infringement.

[* for an erudite discussion on what art might or might not be, check out Grayson Perry's Reith Lectures]

Mikella Psara: Αυτό, με επιτηδευμένο?

It is difficult to come up with a translation into the Greek from the Franglais. Moreover, despite the commonly held belief, the Greeks don't have a word as such for 'pretentious' as we understand it in its derogatory sense when combined with Le Francais - 'Pretentious, Moi?'

But this is the perfect description for an Art Exhibition visited by members of the Xorg Collective yesterday. The artist concerned is named Mikella Psara and she is apparently taken seriously in some parts. Here's what Dr Tonia Loizou (allegedly an Art Historian) says about her:

"Like a symphony moving in time and space, like a ritual different from previous ones, the paintings of Mikella Psara impress with their simplicity and their subject matter. Here, the materials (wax, safety pins, paper) and every combination thereof, guide the creation of the work with ease. With wax (multiform - multidimensional - timeless) and paper (recycled- tied to its history - fragile), shapes are created in which are embodied objects (safety pins like talismans - reminders of childhood. The wax dematerialises the shapes and, through its fragile relationships, conveys everything that we carry only deep inside ourselves. The works carry the viewer away on a timeless journey and, at the same time, they function as synchronies, a return to our perpetual course in which exquisite simplicity reveals fragile, transparent relations." (That's enough - Ed.)

First, I tend to agree with The Brother that if an artist can't be bothered to give a work a title then I can't be bothered to look at it, so I am automatically put of by a work entitled 'Untitled'. I'm willing to concede to it now and then but there's such a thing as pushing yer luck, Mrs! Every single piece in the exhibition is 'Untitled' - a room full of 'Untitled'. Yer 'avin a larf, or what? I doubt it, as there's no humour otherwise in a collection dabbling in different ways of mixing up wax, paper and safety pins, some representational, some not. The fact is, the artist had one idea (wax, paper, safety pin) and has flogged it to death, producing forty-odd items for which she hasn't had the wit or imagination to dream up titles. Maybe if she were to pick two or three of her best pieces in this wax, paper, safety pin medium and include them in a broader exhibition of her work, one might be able to take it seriously. Otherwise forget it!