Romance in the Age of Uncertainty

By Mario Flecha

Before becoming one of our most popular short story tellers and collaborators, he also was the editor of an art magazine called Untitled. Here he gives us his impressions of an exhibition by L’enfant terrible and founder of the Young British Artist scene, Damian Hirst

Five years have passed since Damien Hirst’s last solo exhibition at the White Cube Gallery. On this occasion he has gone to fantasyland, in order to ride the blessed cow of Hoxton Square in Charity Street and produce an economic miracle along the way. Reading the description of this work in the press release troubled me – ‘These new works by Damien Hirst are layered, traumatised and porous’ – it said. I sensed a deep hint of what? Spiritual complexity, perplexity, intricacy or ambiguity?

A few hours south of Madrid in Ciudad Real, under the Mediterranean sun, a bull charges against the matador. “Ole!” Shout the crowd, followed by a tense silence until the split second when the bull appears on the other side of the red rag and the matador extends his arms in the air, signalling that he has once more escaped its fury. 

Damien Hirst embraces the uncertainties of being a visual biographer with a macho posture: ambitious, heroic and absurd. The history he tries to tell has been around for more than 2000 years and has been explored to the point of exhaustion by the Catholic Church and its enemies. Fanatics on both sides have studied every word, image and detail. Because of this the story has as many versions as people who have narrated them (I am sure somebody has said that before, probably a Frenchman). Hirst recorded fragments of the tale of Jesus and the disciples, their passion and martyrdom. 

The Apostles, consists of 13 cabinets, each depicting the life and death of one of the apostles and the ascension of Jesus. Each contains a group of threatening surgical instruments, surrounded by laboratory glassware and objects illustrating various parts of their existence and tragic passing. To make it more actual he has splashed blood on some of the cabinets and on the floor. But how in his mind does he associate this with a beheaded St James or the crucified St Simon or the slaying of St Matthew with an axe? The public expectation that a horn should find a bit of flesh runs parallel to the edgy movements of the man risking his life. 

At the centre of the gallery, in front of each vitrine, is a display of theatricality. On the floor there are two parallel lines, each comprising of six glass tanks containing pickled cow’s heads, representing the corresponding apostle. Then opposite the entrance closing the imaginary lines, lays an empty container portraying the Ascension of Jesus. Next to the abstract Son of God is a blindfolded Judas the apostate. Is Hirst implying that the disciple was not a traitor because he was ignorant or innocent, or are the apostles playing blind man’s bluff. In the process the beasts have suffered all kinds of mutilation, a head is severed from the body some are skinned, others cut in half. What? He wants to be a mythmaker and shock us, which is ok for cat lovers, bike drivers and mindless collectors but in the real world myths are the collective creation of the people. Not the privilege of individuals.

The mid afternoon sun is hot in Castilla and its luminosity injures the eyes. It’s hard to concentrate in the Arena. Suddenly the banderilleros riding horses appear from everywhere cajoling the bull with the purpose of debilitating it.

First they tease it then they stab it in the neck with a barbed dart, with banderole, the beast’s strength drains away preparing a path for the bullfighter to finish the job or more accurately to kill it with one death blow. The bull runs in a circle desperate. Meanwhile his blood and life flow out of his body from the stab wound, staining the Arena red.

Throughout centuries Christian communities have developed a visual code to represent their symbols and myths and to perpetuate a dialogue between God and man. Isn’t it extraordinary that God should have chosen a fashionable gallery in London and a fashionable artist to let us know The Message? God works in mysterious ways. In the meantime Hirst’s message is an empty one. With ‘Romance in the Age of Uncertainty’, there is not a hint of intellectual or historically critical thought. It is all about optical disquiet. He fails to provide an interpretation to enable us to consider the meaning of life. Departing from the religious subject, he gets involved with another recurring topic in his work: death. He has said very little about it here but he exhibits two monumental paintings of lush butterflies, the wings shaped like the images seen inside a kaleidoscope. Butterflies live for about a day. Pushing the connection to the limits, the implication is that these are the symbol of death in his colourful cosmology.

The matador is ready to kill. His right leg is in front of the left, the right firm and strong on the floor, whilst the left is floating to allow him to respond to the attack with swift movements. He holds the sword with both hands. Suddenly the absence of any sound develops into a magical silence that one can feel and touch. Meanwhile the bleeding bull, unable to stop fighting, charges against the man who has been tormenting him.

The matador is ready to kill. His right leg is in front of the left, the right firm and strong on the floor, whilst the left is floating to allow him to respond to the attack with swift movements. He holds the sword with both hands. Suddenly the absence of any sound develops into a magical silence that one can feel and touch. Meanwhile the bleeding bull, unable to stop fighting, charges against the man who has been tormenting him.

The worst is always around the corner or in this case on the first floor of the gallery. In the middle of the small space there are four glass tanks shaped like a cross, again containing pickled cow’s heads but this time the violence goes beyond explanation. Two conflicting emotions surface simultaneously. The first is fear for the artist’s state of mind, whilst the second is the sensation that he is playing a macabre joke on us. I can easily imagine that the artist bought more cow’s heads than he needed, ran out of ideas and playfully stabbed the heads up to eighty times with knives, glass and scissors while thinking ‘Jesus why didn’t you have sixteen disciples’. As biographies go this one states the obvious: he has no tale to tell. As an exhibition it is baroque in presentation as minimal in content.

Mario Flecha is a writer, art critic and former editor of the art magazine Untitled. He currently resides in England. His most recent book, Various of his books can be purchased in our virtual bookshop Tienda Perro Negro

Romance on the Age of Uncertainty took place in September-October 2003 at the White Cube Gallery in East London. This review first appeared in the Winter Issue of Untitled of the same year.

Images: Child Divided (part of Mother and Child), 1993 / Catalogue cover of the exhibition, 2003