Will China sue Damien Hirst?

Unless somebody’s making knock-offs of your work, artists suing each other is insane. Hirst, of course, has positioned himself in the insanity and death of contemporary economics. He’s the poet of poisoned individualism. Like Jeff Koons before him, he absorbs criticism as part of his strategy. His work both scrutinizes the art world and milks it dry. Will he manage to undermine not only the younger generation but the gallery system that offers free admission to art history’s ground floor? If he helps to bring the house down, his unregulated greed will be late capitalism’s cracked mirror.

Back to skulls. When human ones become aesthetic, their messages are indisputable, with a bottom line wide as a boardwalk.

1. Tick tick. Remember you must die.

2. Mourning. Alas, poor Yorick. (A subset of mourning is outrage, as in this map of Cambodia made of skulls.)

3. Party down, preferrably in the graveyard with your nearest and dearest, and then remember you must die.

By adding bling, Hirst was well within the formula. He peeled the familiarity
from No. 1 (memento mori) and sweetened it with No. 3 (a party kick)
for horror, which is back to No. 1.

Riswold skipped 1 and 2 to root himself in 3, and that’s the problem. He doesn’t have the depth to compete with
Mexican graveyard humor, even under the guise of a Hirst
tribute.

(For an excellent beyond-the-skull-but-dead-anyway image of Hirst satire, go here.)

4. Recycling. Matthew Day Jackson, I Like America and America Likes Me in The Violet Hour at the Henry Gallery, photo Richard Nichol. Jackson’s muscle car rides on our fossils. Will Hirst sue? Probably not, because Jackson is an adult and can afford a lawyer.