Damien Hirst

These excerpts from a NYTimes article on Damien Hirst brought to mind the concept of Dinah and Paul Ryan's recent Adaptation Syndrome show.

"I've been thinking about painting a lot," he said. Over the years, he said, he has collected about 1,000 photographic images that have captured his imagination, many from newspapers and magazines.

"I started out airbrushing," he said. "But the images looked flat, dead. For two years I didn't think it was going to work." Finally, he said, he disciplined himself to represent each image faithfully by hand.

Still, he doesn't consider himself a serious painter. "I would feel uncomfortable putting myself in a category with other painters like Goya or Bacon," he said. "I'm more interested in the images than the painting."

I still don't understand some of their selections (Ron Johnson?*) for that show, although I'm grateful for the effort. It's over. Please do another one!

Zeke's Gallery has the series of photographs that one of the paintings in Hirst's current Gagosian show is based on. Fascinating and sad, who needs the paintings?

Here's a Guardian take on Hirst from earlier this year.

* if you are new to this blog, I'm not dissing Ron, only saying that his work had absolutely nothing to do with the curatorial concept.