Hirst's Indulgencies

Originally posted: September 22nd 2008.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that although the fearless hacks of the Press may lay into the pretentions of 'national security' and the War on Fright, they will roll over on their backs every time when it comes to dealing with the ubiquitous onslaught of State Art. The puffs which pass as reviews are not enough, and often the recipients of State Indulgence may also benefit from free plugs in the news pages. Here's a response (in the Observer letters page, 21.09.08) to one of those pieces of so-called news, from Gil Elliot of London:
Contrary to Peter Conrad's inflation of the concept, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is manifestly false ('I have to admit it - the man really is a genius', News, 17th September 08). Imagining death is at the foundation of all religions and all great artistic traditions. The earliest surviving written text, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is about the discovery of death. In our own age, which trumpets the Holocaust, the Bomb and a world full of dying children, someone who conceives death as physically impossible can hardly be called 'living'.
Damien Hirst's trade is akin to the medieval sale of indulgencies as practised by Chaucer's 'Pardoner', who tells the tale of three men who go in search of gold and find instead death. But it is Chaucer who invents the tale, not the 'Pardoner', a fellow who lives off the sale of fake relics, with an aura of the magical. He trades with the sanction of Rome, just as Hirst rakes it in with the backing of curators, guardians and critics.