One Total Tosser

In her "Archiving and Conservation" presentation on 27th Feb, Mary (our Context of Practice lecturer) managed to identify three people that sounded to me like total tossers.

Rather than rush to judgement, however, I've done a little research.  My three candidates were (drum roll):

Damien Hirst

I didn't know much about Hirst, apart from his predilection for putting dead animals (sharks, sheep etc) in glass tanks of formaldehyde.

Mary showed his shelves of pills, which, I suppose, does get you thinking about journeys through life (for a few minutes).

It sounds as though Hirst's early "career" owes a lot to Charles Saatchi (yellow card), with whom he eventually fell out.

Hirst's Wikipedia entry says he's the wealthiest living British artist with a net worth of £215 million according to the 2010 Sunday Times rich list (another yellow card).

The Wikipedia entry also quotes him saying: "I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."

In Mary's presentation, she quotes Brian Sewell describing Hirst's work as "fucking dreadful" so I suppose you could say Hirst has achieved his goal.

One could also surmise that Hirst is doing a Banksy - demonstrating that the value of art is in the name of the artist and not in the quality of the art he or she produces.

But that's too complicated for me.   Personally, now that I have looked at Hirst's work and considered it, to put it his words, I would say:  "F off' - you are a total tosser".

UPDATE:  In the cool light of day I realise that I've rushed to judgement on Charles Saatchi!  I hardly   know anything about him (apart from the obvious stuff) so I am in no position to view him with disdain and hand out yellow cards to his acolytes .

 So, apologies, and I'll take the yellow card back while I do some research.  First step (apart from reading his Wikipedia entry):  I've just ordered one of Saatchi's books,  Babble (second-hand, 45 pence).

UPDATE 26th March
I've changed my mind about Saatchi - see my latest post.   Now I'm beginning to wonder whether I was wrong about Damien Hirst!

Brian Sewell

I agree with Sewell about Damien Hirst's work but there's two things about Sewell that make my lip curl - his over-the-top upper class accent and mannerisms and his whole attitude to plebs like me. 

Actually, three things:   Sewell doesn't like Banksy,  my hero, which is how he gets on to insulting plebs in this quote referenced by Wikipedia and Mary:

"The public doesn't know good from bad. For this city (Bristol) to be guided by the opinion of people who don't know anything about art is lunacy. It doesn't matter if they [the public] like it."

However, there's plenty to like about Sewell, in particular his outspoken criticism of conceptual art, the Turner Prize and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery.  He also ridicules Hockney, which I enjoy.

Thinking about it.  Sewell goes out of his way to annoy lots of people so maybe his accent and attitude to plebs/northerners/women is all part of his act.

Just in case this is Sewell's game I'm going to withhold his total tosser title.  So there!

Jacques Derrida

Mary said this French philosopher was sometimes accused of deliberately writing in ways that were difficult to understand.  If you've read some of my previous posts you'll know that this is like a red rag to a bull for me.

Jacques Derrida (deceased) was born in El Biar, Algiers. 

I lived in El Biar myself in 1973/4! 

Derrida's (extensive) Wikipedia entry includes something about his writing "style":

In his 1989 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues that Derrida (especially in his book, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond) purposefully uses words that cannot be defined (e.g. différance), and uses previously definable words in contexts diverse enough to make understanding impossible, so that the reader will never be able to contextualize Derrida's literary self. Rorty, however, argues that this intentional obfuscation is philosophically grounded. In garbling his message Derrida is attempting to escape the naïve, positive metaphysical projects of his predecessors.

Frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys.  I can't see myself ploughing through Derrida's philosophical thoughts whether or not they're written in double-Dutch.

So it isn't worth insulting Derrida with a tosser tag in my opinion.