Damien Hirst: has shock art lost its bite?

It wasn’t your usual London street party. There were no children playing, Victoria sponges or Union Jack bunting. Instead, on this balmy early Nineties afternoon, a group of young artists were taking part in a bizarre get-together in Hoxton called A Fete Worse than Death.

At one stall, Tracey Emin did palm readings; at another, Gary Hume sold tequila slammers. Yet the most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown’s costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he’d spot-painted that morning.

Two decades and an estimated 215million later, over 300 of Hirst’s rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian’s art galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London’s flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art’s biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.

Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst’s trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising young Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say that he still divides opinion would be an understatement. “Detestable and f------ dreadful” is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. “Simple-minded and sensationalist” is Australian critic Robert Hughes’s verdict on an entire career.

Then, last month, David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally”, was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art’s enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 “assistants” to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: “I only made five spot paintings myself… And the spots I painted are s----.” But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen…” he told Marr. “I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”

Is he right? Did “conceptual” art take such a stranglehold in Hirst and his compatriots’ wake that technique was sacrificed? Just what has Hirst’s influence been on British artists? And might there, finally, be a swing away from the form he made so famous and infamous all at once?

Hockney’s views are echoed by the artist George Shaw, who graduated from Hockney’s own alma mater, the Royal College of Art, in 1998. “I became incredibly frustrated at art school… that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one,” he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, was Turner-nominated last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that “an art historian and his mother could both enjoy... But that wasn’t what [the tutors] were looking for.”

Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year’s prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths College in Camberwell in the late Eighties. In the Sixties – under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism – art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.

“Damien didn’t create this milieu, but he thrived in it,” says Michael Archer, director of Goldsmiths’ BA in fine art. And Hirst needed little encouragement from Goldsmiths’ Dean at the time, Jon Thompson, who led this break with tradition. “Our philosophy remains the same today,” Archer says. “We don’t break our course down into rigid components of compulsory disciplines.” But doesn’t this encourage following the path of least resistance? Who can be bothered with the 10,000 hours mastering their craft? “If a student wants to learn how to weave or weld, we have the staff to teach it,” he says. “But we don’t force them.”

The painter Gabriella Boyd, a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art, can’t see what the fuss is about. “Drawing’s still taught and it’s still popular,” says the 24- year-old. “I used to love life-drawing class at college and I wasn’t the only one.” A quick look around Boyd’s website, indeed, is like being taken in a time-machine back to a Hockney show in the early Sixties.

Art inspired by 'natural world'

Ann Singsaas of Stevens Point and Kathy Brown of Marathon are two central Wisconsin artists who blend traditional materials and techniques with their own contemporary approaches to media and style. They will share their artwork with the public through an exhibit at the Alexander House Center for Art and History through July 5.

Singsaas has studied art at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., the University of Illinois and Eastern Michigan University. She has been painting in both oil and watercolor for more than 20 years and teaching workshops and classes for more than 15 years. She is one of the founders of Gallery Q in Stevens Point.

Singsaas will exhibit works in oil and watercolor. The "Birches" series of paintings uses a very traditional medium -- oil paint -- on a less conventional surface -- hand-brushed aluminum. The effect is as if you are seeing these natural objects, rendered in a highly realistic style, pop off the surface on which they are applied. These works invite careful inspection of both subject and technique. Birch trunks, dandelions and budding twigs take on a slightly surreal quality in juxtaposition with the industrial feel of the machined metal plates. The subjects themselves appear to occupy a space just in front of the picture plane.

"The contrast between something so natural, organic looking and papery as birch bark with the stark impersonal and industrial surface of the metal lets these two ideas, the natural and the manmade, mingle," Singsaas said. "I'm not looking for inner deeper secret meaning in these natural elements, they have a magic all their own. I do, however, use this visual style to trick the viewers' eyes and get them to truly look at something simple, whether it be a milkweed pod or a hunk of aluminum, and see it as beautiful and intricate."

The "Wandering" series started while Singsaas was teaching an outdoor painting class at the University of Michigan Biological Station. That week-long class in Michigan was an opportunity to do a lot of on-site demos that actually made good paintings. This idea of doing small quick paintings transferred well to travel. On each trip, Singsaas brought along a small spiral bound notebook of Arches 140-pound cold-press paper, an old Yarka watercolor pan set, three brushes and a plastic cup. These spare elements allowed for a quick response to the landscape and its changing light. Traveling to different locations and sketching on-site or from photos later on in the studio gave a new perspective to both of the series that will be on exhibit.

Brown weaves a variety of baskets using variations of traditional basket patterns and her own contemporary designs. All of her baskets are hand-woven and almost all are one-of-a-kind. She enjoys working with a variety of basket styles. Brown specializes in twill baskets made with reed and her own versions of antler baskets. She also likes reinventing old, functional baskets in reed for modern use.

"I often start with an established basket pattern or technique but then vary it and refashion it into my own original design," Brown said. "For years I have been interested in various weaving techniques that create double-walled baskets. I especially enjoy mastering the double-sided Choctaw basket and have also developed my own technique in weaving double-walled twill baskets."

Natural materials from Wisconsin, especially antlers and barks, appear in her baskets, but primarily Brown weaves with purchased reed and cane. Reed is a product of the Asian rattan plant whose inner core produces long, sinuous material ideal for working into basketry. Her antler baskets are usually made from a combination of reed, seagrass, willow and acorns. She acquires the white-tailed deer antlers from her husband and brothers and their Wisconsin hunting companions.

"I am in the process of developing willow-weaving techniques and a new willow patch with 10 varieties of willow that grow behind my garage," Brown said. "The willow patch will provide an organic source of weaving materials right in my own backyard. It takes a long time to develop new baskets and you will have to review my basket display to see if these actually start to supplant my love of making baskets out of cane and reed.

"Whether weaving with cane and reed or a variety of Wisconsin materials, I am often inspired by the natural world around me."

The Alexander House Center for Art and History is sponsored by the Alexander Charitable Foundation. Gallery hours are 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or by special appointment.

Contributed by Joe Clark, art director for the Alexander House.