Who’s got a problem with Damien Hirst?

If you owned a portrait of Myra Hindley made from the handprints of a young child, how often would you let it up for air? Probably not much. If you did, you might let it quietly resurface in a group show of 80 all-star artists, just to lessen the sting a little.

Myra is a 1995 reproduction of the serial child killer’s mugshot following her 1966 arrest for the murders of five children. It was painted by a little-known artist called Marcus Harvey and became one of the most controversial paintings of the 1990s. When it debuted in the Royal Academy’s ‘Sensation’ exhibition in 1997, there was uproar. Windows were smashed, activists – including the mother of one of Hindley’s victims – picketed outside. The painting was egged and had ink flung at it; a perspex screen and security guards were installed for its protection. It’s barely been seen since.

Was Connor Hirst anxious when he decided to include Myra in the curation of his father’s latest collection show? Hang on, who’s Connor Hirst? Well, Connor is Damien’s eldest son; he’s an artist and a former director of Science (UK) Ltd, his father’s company (appointed May 2021; resigned June 2022 – no explanation). Beyond his bloodline and a few Alamy snaps of glitzy galas with celeb friends, I have nothing. But let’s not go down the nepo-witch-hunt route. Firstly, that’s not what this is about. Secondly, I know nothing about Connor, and even less about the show, aside from the fact that it was all put together in rather a hurry when a ‘Francis Bacon-inspired exhibition’ was postponed due to issues securing loans.

I can tell you that in the game of art journalism, exhibition context is not usually in short supply. It’s delivered as a lengthy press release, plagued with redundant adjectives and fattened with phrases whose very function is to avoid the point. So I’ll give it to Newport Street Gallery, they’ve kept it tight: there’s the exhibition title: ‘Dominion’, the name of its curator, and a list of 80 artists. And with “no specific spokesperson available to answer any specific questions” It’s a refreshing place to start.

So, there’s some crazy good work here, like some of the greatest-20th-century-works-ever-made level great. How they’re connected – aside from ownership, the colour red and a low-level aroma of death and wickedness – is another question. There’s an ancient Egyptian mummified head, all black and shrivelled and snarling. There’s a Gavin Turk that looks like a Maurizio Cattelan, some Gavin Turks that look like Andy Warhols, and an actual Andy Warhol. Of course, there’s Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, whose work Hirst started collecting while still a student at Goldsmiths. Suddenly it all feels very Top Trumps. Harvey gets 87 for shock factor, Bazelitz scores 69 for auction record, Banksy gets 76 for subversion, Bacon ranks 88 for legacy. Who wins? That’s right: Damien Hirst.

Damien only has one work in the show: a large spot painting dated 1995 (we’ll take his word for it), incidentally, the same year that Connor was born. Sadly, there’s nothing tanked, but there might be good reason for this. Hirst (the elder) has found himself pickled in a back-dating ‘scandal’. Guardian journalists have claimed that a number of his ‘1990s’ formaldehyde sharks were made in 2017. There are also new reports that the dates of thousands of works in his series The Currency (his 2021 NFT vs real painting project) were created years later than the date they are inscribed with. Hirst responded, explaining that the idea for these works came to him in the ‘90s, and therefore the date of actual production is of little relevance.

This has raised some questions about the ethics and legalities of dating artwork, but mostly, the question of who actually cares. Isn’t subversion, illusion and deception Hirst’s whole jam? Honestly, what did we expect? Plus, let’s not forget how Hirst’s original shark changed the entire face of art in this country, as art critic Waldemar Januszczak attested in last weekend’s Times: “I was there, I saw it happen. One minute contemporary art was on p39 of the newspaper. The next minute it was front-page news.” Love or loathe, Hirst and Emin, for a few heady years, got the whole country talking about contemporary visual art.

Now Emin’s out of bounds from the tabloid firing squad; the Turner Prize has turned into a tepid, gloves-on battle of social causes; and museums are mostly occupied with decolonisation, restitution, climate change and in the case of the British Museum, who’s nicking what from the archive. The rest of the gang – Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Mat Collishaw, Rachel Whiteread, Jenny Saville among them – have all moved on or vanished from the mainstream headlines. All except Hirst. The sad reality is that these days, without him, art coverage would be lucky to reach p39. He’s the last of a genre, clinging onto the dregs of Sensation’s legacy.

It used to be easy: you’re an artist, you do something freaky, you let the tabloids do the rest. But art-related outrage, celebrity, opinion and criticism don’t really exist anymore. All the scandal is bound up in faceless finance, fraud, hacking, theft and dodgy dealing.

30 years later, the YBAs (propped up by Hirst), refuse to become the OBAs and make way for the next gen of headline makers. It still feels like the usual suspects, the same rotation of artists and critics wheeled out on every broadcast in which art in this country is the subject.

The closest we got to a shake-up was last year, with the Evening Standard’s much-mocked proclamation of the YLAs (Young London Artists, duh!) – though few were actual artists, few seemed to be connected, and few anyone had heard of (aside from some oddly familiar surnames).

When Hirst put on ‘Freeze’ in 1988 (an exhibition which would change the course of British art history), the world had a different set of pain receptors. Most of this work in ‘Dominion’ was made when all the agony of the world was less accessible, less immediate and had the illusion of being further away. How to create a sensation in a world so desensitised? Can art even do that anymore?

Well, ‘Dominion’ is giving it a go. Its theme is clear: PAIN! Fuck me up, I’m too comfortable! Celtic trophy skull with an arrow violently piercing its frontal bone? Nah, try again. John Bellamy’s bloodied, dismembered crucifixion? Getting there, but hit me harder! Mat Collishaw’s knife-pierced torso? Yeah!! Oh no, wait, it’s gone. Myra Hindley rendered in the hands of young children? Ok, that’ll do. 

Some of the best work in ‘Dominion’ doesn’t try so hard to make you feel. The impact lasts longer; a burn, not a sting. Like a waxy monochrome portrait by Zhang Haiying; a lesser-known Marcus Harvey, Jess On Toilet (2004); Richard Prince’s Hurricane Nurse, and the most extraordinary of all, Francis Bacon’s Fury (1944), a variant of the right panel of his famed triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. I’m torn like a body on a mediaeval rack, between feeling awed by the accessibility of all this work – most of which is genuinely exceptional and often unseen – and cynical that this is a cry for a little ego massage now the hype around The Currency has died down and all that alleged dodgy dating has dialled up. ‘Dominion’ ends, as a lot of things seem to, with a neon Emin, a message of love: My Heart is With You, and I Love You. Always, Always, Always. As if to offer some antidote to the horrors just seen.

It would be easy to call this a vanity project: my gallery, my collection, my mates, my son. But let’s not forget that Hirst started out as an organiser. Charles Saatchi often gets all the YBA credit, but without Hirst, without ‘Freeze’, we’d probably have none of it. Hirst’s relationship to so much of this work is felt, seen and experienced. What other mega-collector could claim such proximity?

And as we desperately try to squeeze out the last acerbic juice of the lemon that was YBA art, we reach an uncomfortable truth: that art just can’t shock us anymore, it all just shrivels in the shadow of real-world horrors.

So far, there have been no protests outside ‘Dominion’; no eggs hurled, no windows smashed, no critical shots fired. The one review of this show called it ‘exquisite’. No one had a problem with the show, but many still have a problem with Hirst. Maybe it’s because he has it all: the eldest son eagerly following in his footsteps, the girl, the newborn, the money, the epic collection, the industrial-scale studios, the army of fans and production assistants, the stately home, the eyes, ears and wallets of the world. We’re told that the best art comes from adversity and that the artist should be in pain, poverty, war, an identity crisis, or under persecution. The artist should give everything to their work, and have nothing to lose.

We love to hate Damien Hirst because he dares to have it all, with bravado.