A Fishy Business

The problem with much of “Brit-Art”, and current Art in general, stems from a confusion between Creativity and Originality.  These terms are not synonymous.  We could change them slightly and call them “Having Something To Say” and “Novelty”.  In these terms, novelty is a relatively trivial thing; it could be a new sweet, a new hair colour, or a new way to sell soap.  It is rarely original, though it is quite often a synthesis between two or more existing objects or ideas.

Let us think about Damien Hirst’s shark.  For the moment forget what it’s called.  It’s a big dead shark pickled and hanging in formaldehyde in a big glass tank.  It’s novel as far as Art Galleries go.  You might expect to see it in a Museum.  But does it have anything to say to us?  Apart, of course, from “ooh, I’m a big dead shark”.  No.  It is not an object with any profundity, any more than stuff you can see hanging in a Butcher’s Shop or on a Fishmonger’s slab. 

Now let us consider the title.  It’s called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”.  Does this alter the way we see the dead shark?  Does it refer to the death of the shark or the death of the viewer of the shark?  If we, for the sake of argument, say that the title makes a difference to the way we perceive the dead fish, precisely why does it do that?  Are we then saying that the shark, as a work of Art, is dependent on words to give it meaning?  If so, which could we dispense with more easily without losing the sense of the piece - the shark or the words?  I’d say the shark.  It has become redundant because of the words, which somewhat clumsily posit a powerful facet of human existence.  I would argue that if, as an Art object in itself, the shark in the tank was the result of the “creative impulse” - for want of a better term -  this would not be the case.

It is hard to think of another work of Art which both utterly depends upon, and is subverted by, its title.  Dali’s title “La Montre Molle” is at least witty and rude; Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” has the virtue of being a rude pun; “Duchamp’s “Fountain” is interestingly accurate.  But “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”?  Too many words, too much adolescent profundity.

The following is lifted from Wikipedia on 31st August 2009:

Referring to another of Hirst’s works, “Away from the Flock” (a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde), Brian Sewell said, "I don't think of it as art ... It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. Indeed there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep."

In 2003, under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art, the Stuckism International Gallery exhibited a shark which had first been put on public display two years before Hirst's by Eddie Saunders in his Shoreditch shop, JD Electrical Supplies. Thomson asked, "If Hirst’s shark is recognised as great art, then how come Eddie’s, which was on exhibition for two years beforehand, isn’t? Do we perhaps have here an undiscovered artist of genius, who got there first, or is it that a dead shark isn’t art at all?"* The Stuckists suggested that Hirst may have got the idea for his work from Saunders' shop display.

So if anyone out there is prepared to defend the poor old shark, please comment.

(Article first published on 31/08/2009)