KNAVES OF ARTS
David Lee on 'Hymn 'and Hirst or how to make a million out of a £14.99 Woolworth's toy
AT last year's Contemporary Art Fair in Islington, two abstract paintings of the same largish size were hung close enough for them to be seen in the same glance from the balcony. The first had a blue streak down the middle and cost £4,000; the other was a swirling vortex of gaudy colours and cost £65,000. No intrinsic artis- tic considerations suggested that one paint- ing should be priced so much higher than the other. The blue streak was by someone whose name I can't recall, whereas the centrifugal whirl was identifiably a trade- mark Damien Hirst, who is celebrated the world over for his swirlers. The high price was dictated by the artist's fame, not by any artistic superiority over any other abstract painting in the entire bazaar. What counts most towards establishing a reputation in contemporary art is the instant recognis- ability of the brand.
In the past few weeks we have been treated to a classic example of how this system of marketing and branding oper- ates. It involves the grandmaster of art dealing and art-related spin, who was among the first to realise that an artist's reputation has little to do with how good his work is, and everything to do with notoriety and visibility. What Tony O'Reil- ly did three decades ago with Kerrygold, Charles Saatchi and the artist's other deal- er, Jay Jopling, have achieved with Damien Hirst in the last ten years.
Unless you've spent April incommunica- do in an Antarctic research station, you will be aware of the latest 'formidable' (the Times) masterpiece by Damien Hirst. You will know that it was based entirely on a 10-inch educational toy (£14.99 from Woolworth's) of a half-ecorche humanoid showing the major organs of the body and cost Charles Saatchi a million quid. A mil- lion, mark you, is a conveniently round, memorable number and lends itself to tabloid splashes of the 'Is this worth a mil- lion?' ilk. In much the same way that the 'Angel of the North' was worshipped as a major piece of engineering (which it wasn't, but never mind) the statistics of this piece, called 'Hymn' (One of the forceful British sculptures of the 20th cen- tury', the Times), have been presented as so impressive that they merit the sculp- ture's daily claim on our attention: seven tons of bronze; eight tons; 10 tons; 20-feet high; 30 feet; two years' work; a million dollars of labour. . . .
The way it became the most famous sculpture in Britain since Tracey's stained bedsheets is indicative of the now familiar modus operandi of Charles Saatchi. He knows that in an age when all fashionable art is as good or bad as everything else being produced, precisely because there are no longer any criteria for judging any- thing, the only ingredient making one piece of art better than another, a swirler, say, as opposed to a blue streak, is the artist's standing. As an award-winning advertising executive, he is well placed to know that a reputation can be created. Along with several other art dealers, Saatchi advertises the artists he bulk pur- chases by using the editorial pages of newspapers.
So practised in this string-pulling art is Saatchi that 'Hymn' was well-known and had been discussed exhaustively on the radio and in newspapers even before any- one had actually seen it. 'Hymn' is part of an exhibition called Ant Noises, an ana- gram of Sensation, (another anagram, 'Is Not Sane', might be better), currently on show at the Saatchi collection, and show- ing what the artists who featured in the original, controversial Sensation show in 1997 are doing now. The answer is: much the same as before, except more expen- sively. Hymn is the centrepiece of the dis- play and was selected in advance of the exhibition's opening as the work most like- ly to attract attention, presumably because it is by the news-obsessed Hirst and because Saatchi, who already owns many works by the great pickier, has a longstand- ing investment in the artist. Three weeks before the show, Richard Brooks, arts cor- respondent of the Sunday Times, was offered an exclusive on 'Hymn'. The angle adopted was the big price paid for it, obvi- ously helpfully supplied, accurate, exagger- ated or otherwise, by a gallery which could out-spin Shane Warne. It spun for close on half a page.
The Sunday Times advanced the story the following week because callers to the paper had helpfully identified that the sculpture was a straight copy of an anatomical toy. A conspiratorial mind might suspect that at least one of these callers had been put up to it, and indeed there are good reasons for suspecting this, more of which later. Hirst had increased the size of the toy but hadn't otherwise altered it. This allowed for discussion of the increasing reliance of contemporary artists on plagiarism. There was also the issue of the artist's possible hypocrisy: Hirst is never slow to protect what he perceives as his copyright while apparently borrowing from others whatev- er he wants without either prior arrange- ment or subsequent acknowledgement. Most commentators and radio producers had already forgotten, it being five months ago, that the most famous work by last year's Turner Prize winner, the video artist Steve McQueen, was a recapitula- tion of a Buster Keaton film sequence for which Buster's estate should have demanded a fee.
Early the next week Dalya Alberge in the Times prolonged the story by tracing the person, one Norman Emnas, who had mod- elled the toy for its makers, Humbrol. He was understandably put out and the toy company accused the artist of theft while giving notice that they were considering a compensation claim. Hirst himself conced- ed in the Guardian that he fully expected to be sued 'because I copied it so directly'. Inevitably, the tabloids weighed in with variants of the 'diabolical liberty' line. Just as the story was running out of puff the exhibition opened to the press, whose crit- ics were eager to air their twopenn'orth on this most controversial, 'surging' (the Times) sculpture since the last occasion that a Saatchi-owned work was cannily hyped. By this stage it didn't matter whether the sculpture was any good because it was already famous and had eas- ily justified its million-pound price tag on the strength of its notoriety alone. In a world where stardom is its own reward, to be talked about and noticed is everything. Talking about a work is now the most important aspect of it, far more important apparently than any pleasure to be derived from looking at it. 'Hymn' was exhaustively discussed, though never for its sculptural qualities. The 'arresting' (the Times) object became a catalyst for a discussion of theoret- ical 'issues' concerning contemporary art, ill this instance plagiarism, or 'appropriation' as critics prefer to label it; and, inevitably, whether an enlarged toy could be consid- ered art at all. The work of art as some- thing to be looked at and appreciated for its visual qualities has given way to the object as catalyst for argument. It doesn't matter if the work, as is indeed so often the case, fails to live up to its advance billing, because it is only ever as good as the publicity it generates. You may recall that the first line of defence used by Turn- er Prize apologists is that it foments dis- cussion and makes art a talking point. Thus 'Hymn' pre-empted and rendered superfluous the opinion of art. Who gives a stuff about a review in the largely unread arts section when a work has already done the rounds of the news, gossip, editorial, feature and comment pages?
When asked by Richard Brooks, Saatchi claims not to have known that the 'power- ful' (the Times) 'Hymn' was based on a model. There are several reasons to doubt his asseverations of ignorance. The timing of the first leak to the Sunday Times was crucial. There was no reason to leak the million-quid masterpiece so long before the show's opening unless it was known that the story could be given additional legs in the form of the plagiarism angle. Interest- ingly, 'Hymn' was an old story. Peterbor- ough in the Daily Telegraph had carried notice of the sculpture in October last year. Hirst, the column claimed, had taken 'a plastic anatomical model' (true) to a foundry in Stroud (true) and asked them to make a very large version of it (true). It had even been given a title: 'Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Man'. Naturally, Hirst's gallery denied the story (lies). Peterborough also inadvertently spoiled the claim that the 'mesmeric' (the Times) Hymn represented two years' work, as though dear old horny-handed Damien had been toiling away making it in his studio night and day. Luckily no one pursued Peterborough's inconvenient and plainly unauthorised leak.
Coincident with the dripping leak of 'Hymn' to the papers by the Saatchi Gallery, Damien Hirst's dealer, Jay Jopling of White Cube Gallery, revealed for the first time that a PR strategy involving shock tactics had been decided upon in the early 1990s as a method of promoting the work of 'Sensa- tion-type artists by very judicious leaks to the tabloid press'. Jopling conceded recent- ly that critical opposition to work was, in his view, crucial to establishing an artist's repu- tation and 'cutting-edge' credibility.
Without negative criticism there was not the least chance of orchestrating a cause célèbre. On the evidence of those who worked closely with Jopling throughout the 1990s, we now know that he was a bril- liant operator. Like Charles Saatchi's, Jopling's gift as a dealer has never been his artistic insight, but was always a talent for knowing what will provoke.
The Sensation exhibition, all of whose works derived from Charles Saatchi's dealer stock, reprised all the major works throughout the 1990s which had at one moment or another caused a stink in the papers. The spin for the Sensation exhibi- tion itself was caused by the inclusion of Marcus Harvey's Myra Hindley portrait made from children's handprints. This pic- ture had first generated editorial some years before when it was exhibited and bought by Saatchi. In fact the Hindley furore was engineered by the Royal Acade- my itself, which issued a press release which led to the work being vandalised when the show finally opened. The outrage created by the picture's inclusion did the trick and Sensation became one of the most successful shows in the Academy's history. More than all the other furores put togeth- er, the Myra Hindley episode proved that in the land of art spin all publicity really is good publicity. The formula was repeated when Sensation travelled to Brooklyn last year.
The depressing aspect in all of this is that the most discussed artists of the day are now those with the most manipulative and inventive news spinners representing them. By the same process hordes will flock to see 'Hymn'. We will all be able to observe this now familiar marketing phe- nomenon in operation again when in the autumn the Royal Academy stage their 'Son of Sensation' exhibition. Which work will be chosen to whip up publicity? Watch out for the first few tentative spins around the end of June.
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