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Don't lose your head over Hirst Don't lose your head over Hirst
(2 months later)
I really thought nothing could make me say a good word about Damien Hirst. The recent works of this artist – his talentless paintings, his anatomical statue whose kitsch arrogance would make Stalin blush, are so awful they make it easy to forget he ever did anything worthwhile. But he did. His early art deserves respect. Certainly, it does not deserve to be censored.I really thought nothing could make me say a good word about Damien Hirst. The recent works of this artist – his talentless paintings, his anatomical statue whose kitsch arrogance would make Stalin blush, are so awful they make it easy to forget he ever did anything worthwhile. But he did. His early art deserves respect. Certainly, it does not deserve to be censored.
Yet, censor Hirst is exactly what the archaeology department of Leicester University is trying to do. In a ludicrous fit of academic pomposity, the university has issued a press release in which two archaeologists call for an early Hirst work to be taken off view. Since when were archaeologists empowered to ban artworks?Yet, censor Hirst is exactly what the archaeology department of Leicester University is trying to do. In a ludicrous fit of academic pomposity, the university has issued a press release in which two archaeologists call for an early Hirst work to be taken off view. Since when were archaeologists empowered to ban artworks?
Hirst's With Dead Head is currently on view at the New Art Gallery Walsall in an exhibition that draws on the Artist Rooms collection of contemporary art. It is a black-and-white photograph of the artist, aged 16, posing with a severed head in a mortuary in Leeds. The head has its eyes closed and its features are clenched in a posthumous grimace: the artist is grinning like the adolescent he was, perhaps laughing out of his fear, or just showing off nervously in the face of death.Hirst's With Dead Head is currently on view at the New Art Gallery Walsall in an exhibition that draws on the Artist Rooms collection of contemporary art. It is a black-and-white photograph of the artist, aged 16, posing with a severed head in a mortuary in Leeds. The head has its eyes closed and its features are clenched in a posthumous grimace: the artist is grinning like the adolescent he was, perhaps laughing out of his fear, or just showing off nervously in the face of death.
When Hirst decided in 1991 that this photo of himself was a work of art, he was forcing people to look at death. It was the same year that he put a shark in formaldehyde and entitled it The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. At this moment – his best – Hirst was a serious artist who was trying to see, and make us see, the absolute realities of life and death: the impossible gulf between them, the way we try to ignore death because it so mocks life.When Hirst decided in 1991 that this photo of himself was a work of art, he was forcing people to look at death. It was the same year that he put a shark in formaldehyde and entitled it The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. At this moment – his best – Hirst was a serious artist who was trying to see, and make us see, the absolute realities of life and death: the impossible gulf between them, the way we try to ignore death because it so mocks life.
With Dead Head starkly exhibits the greatest mystery in the universe: the difference between living organisms and dead matter. Hirst, grinning madly, is unquestionably alive. So was that head once, but now the man who lived in it is dead. What is life? Why does it end? Hirst was a brave artist when he made this. And now Leicester's archaeologists want to ban it. Matthew Beamish, of Leicester University Archaeological Services, and Professor Sarah Tarlow, an authority on "archaeological ethics", have written to the New Art Gallery Walsall claiming that With Dead Head should not be on public display. Tarlow insists that, "it deserves a place in Hirst's archive, but not in a gallery".With Dead Head starkly exhibits the greatest mystery in the universe: the difference between living organisms and dead matter. Hirst, grinning madly, is unquestionably alive. So was that head once, but now the man who lived in it is dead. What is life? Why does it end? Hirst was a brave artist when he made this. And now Leicester's archaeologists want to ban it. Matthew Beamish, of Leicester University Archaeological Services, and Professor Sarah Tarlow, an authority on "archaeological ethics", have written to the New Art Gallery Walsall claiming that With Dead Head should not be on public display. Tarlow insists that, "it deserves a place in Hirst's archive, but not in a gallery".
Have we become an authoritarian state and I wasn't told? Only in dictatorial regimes do university professors decide what does and does not belong in an art gallery. Even Damien Hirst deserves artistic freedom, and this image goes to the heart of what is most ambitious in his work. I deny that (as the archaeologists seem to think) With Dead Head is only defended by the art world out of some shallow Hirst fandom. I find it a substantial work of art – a moving, harrowing encounter with the reality of life and death.Have we become an authoritarian state and I wasn't told? Only in dictatorial regimes do university professors decide what does and does not belong in an art gallery. Even Damien Hirst deserves artistic freedom, and this image goes to the heart of what is most ambitious in his work. I deny that (as the archaeologists seem to think) With Dead Head is only defended by the art world out of some shallow Hirst fandom. I find it a substantial work of art – a moving, harrowing encounter with the reality of life and death.
Leicester University's experts say it contravenes guidelines on the ethical treatment of the dead: the poor man whose head is in the picture, they say, would have been recognisable to his relatives. He left his body to science and it was used in a jokey work of art. As archaeologists, they claim expertise in this strange field of postmortem ethics. Perhaps they got carried away by the sentimentality that surrounded Leicester's rediscovery of the bones of Richard III. That was a great excavation, but empathy for a medieval skeleton was displayed to a comic degree by weeping representatives of the Richard III Society.Leicester University's experts say it contravenes guidelines on the ethical treatment of the dead: the poor man whose head is in the picture, they say, would have been recognisable to his relatives. He left his body to science and it was used in a jokey work of art. As archaeologists, they claim expertise in this strange field of postmortem ethics. Perhaps they got carried away by the sentimentality that surrounded Leicester's rediscovery of the bones of Richard III. That was a great excavation, but empathy for a medieval skeleton was displayed to a comic degree by weeping representatives of the Richard III Society.
Archaeology is the scientific study of the past, and it has no business pronouncing on the ethics of modern art. Personally, I would not have minded if the archaeologists had posed grinning next to Richard's skull – or at least had the courage to tell the Richard III Society that, in fact, the physical evidence of his twisted spine vindicates Shakespeare's image of him and makes a mockery of their belief he is the victim of Tudor myth. Because science does have an ethical imperative: to tell the truth.Archaeology is the scientific study of the past, and it has no business pronouncing on the ethics of modern art. Personally, I would not have minded if the archaeologists had posed grinning next to Richard's skull – or at least had the courage to tell the Richard III Society that, in fact, the physical evidence of his twisted spine vindicates Shakespeare's image of him and makes a mockery of their belief he is the victim of Tudor myth. Because science does have an ethical imperative: to tell the truth.
I believe that when Hirst made With Dead Head, he was thinking more seriously about death than any professor of archaeological ethics ever has.I believe that when Hirst made With Dead Head, he was thinking more seriously about death than any professor of archaeological ethics ever has.
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