You Can Say That Again

Contemporary Art?                                                               Ends: In All Due Haste

TATE MODERN

Damien Hirst (RAOW. Fast-medium. Career best: 2 n.o. (Beaumont vs Oratory). Highest score: 2 n.o. (I've just said that)

A ping pong ball dances in the air blown by a pink spindryer. The work opens the controversial blockbuster devoted to Mr. Hirst (born 1865). The British "artist" is displaying his morbid, world-famous, hyperexpensive works: the 8601-diamond skull (for a few hours a day through June 24) in a small bunker in the Turbine Hall; the shark, sheep and illegal imigrants in formaldehyde; the pharmaceutical packaging, surgical instruments, cigarette butts and facsimile pills in cabinets; one (dripping) spot painting, before Mr. Hirst hired people to paint the perfect spot by the thousands; and the butterfly arrangements. To Mr. Hirst’s aesthetic credit, three radiant spin paintings (gloss paint was dropped on a spinning canvas) and to his discredit, the installation of maggots devouring the severed and bleeding head of a cow and a giant ashtray full of smoking detritus, surely his masterpiece. Left, "Lullaby, the Seasons 2002 (detail), and "Mother and Child Divided, Exhibition copy 2007." (Damien Hirst and the Tremoloes)