Damo Hirsto

In June this year, as a belated birthday gift, my boyfriend and I took a trip to London to see the retrospective Damien Hirst exhibition. Whilst I am a fine of modern art, it's always been a bit to hard for me to understand the actually significance of it, as well as the fact it's not something you could easily have in your home - a very significant point when describing Hirst's work.

My thoughts on the exhibition are...mixed. There have been a mixed number of reviews regarding the exhibition, and from the die-hard art lovers, these have been mainly, negative. After Hirst vowed never to have a retrospective of his work, he seems to have gone back on his word in many peoples eyes just for the economic 'sell-out'. He's OBVIOUSLY always been thought of as being in it for the money instead of the 'art itself', as he was the only artist to ever sell all his art in an auction, and the fact he has staff who construct his famous 'dot paintings' (these bored me to death and seemed unnecessarily time consuming for something that felt a bit kitsch).

His work is however, fascinating. 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'  AKA the shark is outstanding - it's not every day you get to see a huge shark suspended and still in a tank. 'Mother and Child Divided' AKA the cows, is also amazing, and revolting. Oh, talking of revolting, my favourite work has to be the rotting cow head being eaten by flies. Who would think of that as art? His work has the shock factor of course, as well as having decadently expensive works - it feels like a privilege to be standing next to 'For the Love of God'.

Whilst his some of his anatomical pieces are interesting enough, the most interesting but distressing room was of course Room 5 - the butterfly room. Thinking it was going to be really cute, I went in. Unfortunately these butterflies were indescribably large,  and unusual DRUNK from all the fruit they'd been drinking, leading to them flying around in a very tipsy fashion. My fear of Moths shone through as I suddenly realised Butterflies were a lot like Moths. 

Hirst has to be given credit for his originality and the fact he was a main player in the YBA's. However it's questionable how much he cares about his art in way's that other artists do...a couple of weeks ago he appeared on Blue Peter and encouraged children to instead of being use a machine instead of being skilled. He's a bit of dickhead and he got a GOLD Blue Peter badge. What the fuck?