Gwendoline: Henry is an artist, a painter. A lot of critics are also artists, possibly the majority of people writing here. To answer your question, a lot of disdain is heaped on Hollywood blockbusters. Often that contempt is earned by their vapidity and calculated pandering to our lust for easy entertainment. Likewise with Hirst.

As well, the world, as far as I can tell, is more interested in art than ever before. There’s more money in art than any time in history, more people going to museums and galleries, more people making art, more cultural significance and visibility for even the lowest manufacturers of culture. “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” is a great sculpture. Most of the rest of Hirst’s career seems like a lazy man making lazy art. Your explanation of the value of his dot paintings falls really flat to me. There’s nothing that indicates that they’re critical of lame art, they don’t help anything, and they don’t advocate for better art. They’re expensive wallpaper.

The expense itself, I believe, is his testament to the fantastic misunderstanding of importance and the almost irreversable, but not yet, state of art’s volume of legitimate members being pushed into subsidy (loss) and behind bars. In their place, actors of mega loop buzz words and plastic chipped psycho smiles pretend. Hirst, like others, have only but laughed at an army of faux art citizens, unable to recognize the metaphor of an exhibit consisting of nothing but thousands of dots.

Dean,

Thanks for the comment. The question of what separates Hirst’s paintings from those of the “Minimalists” is a good one. For me, Ryman’s paintings invite a more attentive attitude toward looking. Their subtle variations actually clue me in to the phenomenon of visual experience. Martin’s do a similar service. If Ryman asks us to pay attention to the importance of our visual perception, Martin’s paintings seem to use the visual as an entry way to something more emotional or spiritual. I’ve never seen a Stella grid in the flesh, but his project from that time seems to be rooted in a similar desire to trigger our awareness (and ask us to consider the meaning) of our own perception.

For me, the fact that Hirst’s dots don’t spark any reaction (be it phenomenological, emotional or intellectual), is a testament to his desire to use paint “to do nothing”. This is what separates him from Ryman, Martin and Stella, who were all keenly engaged in exploring the communicative possibilities of painting.

Henry

My point here, is that the other night I came across the 60’s geometrical works (especially the squares) by Frank Stella and it seemed to put all this in perspective. So really, what’s the difference between a Stella squares-within-squares paintings and Hirst’s dots? It’s just a different day, a different color and shape. The biggest problem with Hirst is that he doesn’t take the time to act humble.