Comments on: Damien Hirst’s Alcohol-Drenched Sausage in a Baby Bottle and Other Findings

By: tom moody

tom moody — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:31:07 +0000

This is a lighthearted post and didn’t deserve the level of commenter scrutiny it got (subsequent apology noted). The point to me isn’t bafflement with Hirst but the overdetermined prose lavished on empty collectibles. I figured out what a tax disc is, thanks, and it doesn’t matter how long ago Sherman made her Limoges piece, it’s still on the Hirst site and still bad. Paddy, I will say again, you are longsuffering in what you have to take from commenters and I would have turned mine off sooner if I had to endure the picky hectoring you get here.

By: greg.org

greg.org — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:57:34 +0000

sorry to sound like such a bitch. I might have held on to that comment until today, too.

And your point still stands: Damien Hirst’s store: WTF??

By: Art Fag City

Art Fag City — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:06:47 +0000

I might have held on to that post for tomorrow - I would have caught the tone.

This should have been recast: “Maybe one these guys can explain sausage in a baby bottle, Cindy Sherman’s boobalicious tea-set and tax disc holders etc.” The sausage, sure, I would like to hear what Hans Ulrich Obrist has to say about that, the Sherman and the tax discs didn’t need to be on that list.

I really don’t think we need to go back to the googling conversation though. I don’t need to Google Cindy Sherman to know there is a long tradition of artist-made table ware, and it’s okay if it wasn’t my first thought yesterday to Google that information. I liked the site and was enjoying it as such. It wasn’t the point of this post to give a detailed history of table ware — simply to highlight some of the more enjoyable items.

As you point out, those desires aren’t all that visible due to a sentence or two that should have been adjusted in the introduction, but I think we can leave it as that. As for the windscreen, I did Google it, and was sent straight to the dictionary. Unfortunately I didn’t Google tax disc and windscreen in the same query, but as commentors are quick to point out on this blog, its editors occasionally make mistakes.

By: greg.org

greg.org — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:34:52 +0000

while I wholeheartedly agree with the key points:
- Damien Hirst WTF??
- Artist tchotchkes WTF??

the willfully incredulous tone of the post makes me wonder if you’ve been reading too many British tabloids lately.

Bafflement at Hirst’s nonsense is a badge of honor, to be sure, but it’s undermined a bit by the apparent shunning of even the most basic Googling about some basic facts:

Like a tax disc [an actual disc-shaped certificate which you must display on your car's windshield to show that you've paid the road tax, which actually needs a holder of some kind to keep it in place], and the fact that Cindy Sherman’s Limoges china pieces are nearly twenty years old now, have nothing to do with Hirst beyond the retail distribution, and are only one example of a long, oddball tradition of artist-made tableware. [cf, Flavin, Lichtenstein, Turrell, Do Ho Suh, Robert Lazzarini, Vik Muniz, &c.]

The towels, meanwhile, are either from Art Production Fund or are a direct ripoff of their idea. [see also, the Lisa Yuskavage shower curtain]