No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst
I saw this the other day at the Wallace Collection. Which was a bit odd as I’m sure you’ll be aware if you have ever been to the Wallace Collection. The building is a couple of hundred years old and is full of old stuff. Old paintings, statues, suits of armor, antique guns and so on. Even the couches, fittings and banisters are ancient and frequently blocked off by red velvet rope. So it was a bit odd to turn a corner and leave a room filled with 17th Dutch masterpieces and see two long rooms filled with Hirst’s ‘Blue paintings’.
These paintings were done by Hirst himself! No assistants or anything. They are actual paintings too. I’ve never rated Damien Hirst much, so I thought I’d go and see what he’s like as a solitary painter.
To be honest, they were ok. That’s all. Sorry if you were expecting more depth but there you go. The blue skull at the top of this post was one of the better paintings. There were also three others that had a ghostly figure facing a kind of translucent blue forest that I particularly liked. The rest were just alright. There were strong hints of Francis Bacon but they were nowhere near his league.
So there you go. Fairly average would be my overall review. Some good bits but overall I left fairly underwhelmed. It was free and in a cool building I’d never visited before, so it was worth it.
This exhibition has finished now but the Wallace Collection is a brilliant place. I’d highly recommend it. There will be two big rooms with different stuff in it now as well.
