I did something yesterday I thought I'd never do. I avoided looking at works by Damien Hirst. Having followed my instinct on that one, I will now make a more formal pledge: never to write another word about this artist. Even if critics start hailing him in a couple of years as the next Lucian Freud or confess amazement at Diamond Skull II: With Emeralds This Time, I will remain silent. I am done with him.
Hirst's exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London has sputtered on pointlessly into the bitter first month of this year, which is how I accidentally came into proximity with his paintings again. If I'd known the exhibition was still on, I probably would have avoided the museum entirely. As it was, I studied the Titian I had come to see, then left. I studiously avoided Hirst's free-entry show. Why? I didn't want to ugly the hour.
Bad art is ugly art, in the end. Whatever language we might prefer to use, it all comes down to beauty and ugliness. Hirst's ideas seemed to me once to possess an intellectual and emotional beauty – and their own physical beauty, too. Now everything he does is ugly, ugly, ugly, and it adds to the world's already copious stores of junk. His paintings betray a stupidity and arrogance that makes me lose all interest in him. I love painting and I hate to see it abused.
But ... I could probably kid myself otherwise, given time and a change of direction. That's why I have decided to shun Hirst. He's wasted so much of my time over the years. I freely admit that my determination to believe in him distorted my judgement. I won't get fooled again.
