Even then, it is important to note that ‘spin-paintings’ are by far the least provocative of Hirst’s oeuvre. When he was nominated, and won, the Turner Prize in 1995 for his exhibition Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, the reaction of the press and several art critics was enormous. The exhibition featured one of his most famous works, Mother and Child Divided, which showed a sheep and a lamb pickled in tanks of formaldehyde. Hirst defends his formaldehyde work by claiming that they are a very real commentary on the world, of dead things preserved and the awful reality of the fraying family relationships. This explanation did not stop Brian Sewell, art critic for the Evening Standard, from being wholly appalled by Hirst’s award-winning work – “I don’t think of it as art, …I don’t think pickling something and putting it into a glass case makes it a work of art… It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door”. There is no doubt that so much negative press has only increased the interest in Hirst’s work, and by seeing him as ‘taboo’ his work has undergone a surge in popularity that has made his career phenomenally successful.
Damien has managed his career extremely well, and the prominent position of his work in the 1997 Sensation exhibition created another furore over the question plaguing all critics of Hirst – ‘is this art?’. Some of the works shown in the exhibit were examples of his ‘preservation technique’, for example, his many-dissected cow which he rather mockingly titled Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything, contrasted with his mechanical rows of dots, depicting brightly coloured pills on a blank white canvas (Argininosuccinic Acid, 1995). Hirst’s fascination with pills and other prescriptive medicines was part of the reason for his most ambitious project – the opening of a restaurant in Notting Hill called Pharmacy. In many ways, Pharmacy was the biggest failure in Damien Hirst’s entire career thus far. Although its massively hyped opening, with chef Marco Pierre White, and Hirst’s designer pill-box seats and cabinets filled with medicine brought the share price to one pound, the company soon crashed and the restaurant closed down after just three years trading. This did not stop Hirst from making more money out of the venture – he simply auctioned off the entire contents of the restaurant, charging a reserve price of ten pounds for each piece of cutlery. However, even this did not soften the blow entirely – from a holding of four hundred thousand pounds in 1998, the share price dropped to just 4.8 pence.
Keith Allen, one of Hirst’s friends commented, “he’s always been famous in his head” of Damien’s extreme ambition. This can be seen in his constant involvement with other members of the exclusive YBA group, his relationships with others, his media presence and his massive new retrospective ‘Gagosian Show’ in New York, which was met with a hail of praise by seasoned American critics. The citizens of New York, exposed to much modern and post-modern interpretation in art, flocked to see it at the MOMA. However, despite being a commercial success, many New Yorkers were left unimpressed by The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, one visitor commenting: “it’s just a dead shark. What’s special about that?”. As we have seen, not everyone feels the same about Hirst’s meteoric rise – the Stuckist movement, led by Tracey Emin’s ex-boyfriend Billy Childish, has only this to say about his artistic development: “the career of Damien Hirst, its most successful proponent, was launched by advertising mogul Charles Saatchi’s invention of YBAs rather as one might launch a new product such as a jar of coffee” and that whilst even Hirst admits that whilst his work is “bright” and “zany” it remains that “there’s fxxx all there at the end of the day”. Jay Joplin springs to the defence of his protégé, saying that the huge media interest in Hirst is due to his constant re-invention of the art form, and praising the qualities of Hirst as a “savvy businessman” striving to create the supply in response to the demand for new and original pieces. Some have used this business-like regard for his work as a valid criticism for the cheapening the intrinsic value of the art, as The Sunday Times noted “If Hirst is notable for anything, it is for finally severing the link between the “artist” and the person who actually…colours in the dots”.
It is clear that the work and the career of Damien Hirst causes some kind of reaction in anyone remotely interested in the post-modern cultural development of Britain. His controversy remains his greatest asset, pushing prices of his work ever higher. There is no question that he will continue to push for more and more success, and the only foreseeable obstacle is that one day, the ideas might run out.