Damien = bad curator?
It looks like some people don't have nice things to say about damien's curation and collection at Serpentine Gallery. "Damien Hirst's obsessive collecting could prove the death of his own creativity...As a collector, he has crammed far too much of the work into the space. Trusting his artist's eye, he has decided not to place labels within view of the actual pieces. But the series of minuscule captions at floor level is near impossible to read, and when you do bend down to see them, the descriptions fail to specify what materials the works are made from (often a fascinating clue to their meaning). While some of the connections between works are well made, others are glib or trite: an orange painting by Francis Bacon is placed next to an orange painting by Richard Prince."
posted by art blogs are fun at 5:28 PM
1 Comments:
I have to say that Sarah Lucas' work really is absolutely fantastic.
Damien did an okay job with the exhibition. But as with his own artwork, he's not a great editor - he doesn't always know when to stop (but this is one of the main charges that can be lobbed at most artists - it's just that with his higher profile, he stands out). The individual works in the exhibition are, for the most part, pretty terrific. But it's too much of a good thing. Tighter editing would have resulted in a more coherent overall statement, but hey - that's not Damien - his vsion is huge and sweeping, and is one of the things that has allowed him to become one of the most important artists of the 90's and of his generation.
An epic vision, and the tenacious ability to follow through and actually materialize that vision is one of the main abilities that any great artist has to have. Balancing that with an ability to be a vicious self-editor of one's own work is very, very, very rare, indeed.
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