Damien Hirst Tate Modern 2012

On Tuesday I went along to the members preview of the much publicised Damien Hirst show at the Tate Modern.  I took my daughter along with the promise of going shopping afterwards.  The Tate building was impressive as usual.  The show is on the third floor and as it was relatively early no one was queuing at the entrance barriers, which was a blessing.  The first room is surprisingly small and at the time four technicians were attempting to fix a non-working hairdryer that would normally suspend a ping-pong ball in the airstream above it.  The work in this room is his earliest and I imagine it was made in his student studio/space.  My favourite in that room was his large painting of random blobs of paint in bright colours and 8 pans, which I would have liked more if there was a stick to bang them with.

One then goes through into a larger space, in which the noticeable difference in the work is as massive as the room.  Spot paintings line the walls, starting to be more regimented and painted with perfect precision then previously.  Beautifully made cabinets of silver and glass filled with lines of tiny pills, large metal and glass tanks holding sharks, cattle and even office furniture.  In one display, a severed cow's head is rotting and a micro world of flies can be observed.  In another space huge Butterflies hatch from their pupae and fly freely amongst the visitors, living on strategically placed plants and bowls of fruit. (Security staff check the visitors on leaving this room that they are not carrying stowaways unawares).  Then an installation of more medicine cabinets that look as if they are part of a very expensive pharmacy, only without the white coated and immaculately groomed staff; an insect-o-cutor suspended above as a symbol of death. The show grows into a room of opulence; gold display cases filled with rows of diamond cut crystals sparkling in a gold wallpapered room with a small encased shark, the show finishes in a room of quieter but still beautiful religious themed pieces.


The thing that became clear to me was the money - the money that Damien Hirst had required to fuel his imagination and to build his very expensive works of art.  The work in the first room had hinted at ideas but then he had to start making work to fit galleries like Saatchi's on Boundary Road, London  that he visited declaring  'And that's when I realised we wouldn't fit into the art world the way it was.'

We eventually left via the gift shop and planned to see For the Love of God, his life-size platinum cast of a human skull, set with 8,601 diamonds in the Turbine Hall.  It was closed as there was a problem that the technicians were trying to fix.  So we left the gallery and headed across town to another impressive building and wondered among the expensive metal and glass display cabinets of bejewelled fashion and displays of chocolate sculptured bunnies and sugar eggs.....