PT BARNUM LIVES
January 15th, 2012The modern day version of PT Barnum and Tom Thumb are at it again. Larry Gagosian and “artist” Damien Hirst, that wonderful pair that have brought the art world a rotting shark in a tank, dead sheep and maggots feeding on a cows head, have a new exhibit. Or rather exhibits.
8 Gagosian galleries around the globe are simultaneously exhibiting a series of canvas’s on which Tom Thumb, nee D. Hirst, has attached a bunch of circles. Actually, Tom Thumb’s assistants did the attaching as it is beneath a wealthy ”artist” like TT to stoop to glueing circles on canvas particularly when you have to glue about 1,500 of the damn things. In the New York gallery alone, there are 74 “different” works. By “different”, ring-master Gagosian means some of the works are small and some are big. Some have 50 circles, some have only 8.
As usual, art critics for major media have bent semantics to the breaking point to try and justify the buzz which they alone (aside from some shrewd buck-turning “investors” like London’s Charles Saatchi) create. For example, NY Times’s Roberta Smith wrote that the project was, “a blatant promotion of both the Hirst and Gagosian brands, and a sitting-duck symbol of the end-time, we’re-doing-this-because-we-can-decandence that has subsumed so much of the art world; another example of money celebrating itself.”
But, Ms. Smith realized that she couldn’t end there, because maybe the lack of clothes on the emperor might imperil her profession, so she subsequently and quickly writes that the project is ..”more complicated…challenges you to hold opposing ideas at the same time.” Kind of like an art critic trying to justify what she knows is nothing but pure crap!! But, meanwhile, mssrs. Gagosian and Hirst are laughing all the way to the bank.
