{"id":1056,"date":"2012-10-16T21:10:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T21:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2013-07-16T13:55:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T13:55:50","slug":"in-the-course-of-justice-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1056","title":{"rendered":"In the course of justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Damien Hirst has loaned for 20 years to the north Devon seaside resort of Ilfracombe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in which he has one of his many residences \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a 20-metre high sculpture of a pregnant woman wielding a sword and scales, called Verity. Made of glass fibre with a bronze effect finish (which is a bit tacky-Essex even by Hirst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usual vulgar standards), it now stands overlooking the harbour deterring all-comers, especially Welsh privateers heading across the Bristol Channel intent on rape, pillage and illegal benefit claiming.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We must stop building public art work for the wrong reasons of regeneration, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153community cohesion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153putting Ilfracombe on the map\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and other egregious bollocks. We need far fewer public art pieces of all sizes, and far better ones; those that are built because they are accomplished art and will stop and perhaps inspire people with the beauty and originality of their form. Art is art, not a tactic.<\/p>\n

Conveniently, it is a matter of yards from an expensive fish restaurant, proprietor: D Hirst.<\/p>\n

Hirst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s figure stands on a bronze plinth of legal books. Justice … legal books … clever stuff. Is it of any artistic merit? It can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be as he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a sculptor. All we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen so far are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impressions\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, presumably by an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153artist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d other than Hirst himself, who can neither model nor draw. Inventing such a figure might defeat a Michelangelo or a Bernini, so what chance has a stunter like Hirst got? Like everything concerned with him, this project reeks of self-promotion and deriving maximum personal gain. Nowhere in any of the blanket publicity about this has there been a single word about the artistic merit or about the form or deeper meaning of the work.<\/p>\n

It is intended to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a modern allegory of truth and justice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and locals hope it will stimulate tourist activity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that old bogus regeneration chestnut. Realistically, how many are likely to visit Ilfracombe to see this? Four? We repeat: there is no connection between large sculptures and the regeneration of a locality. Newcastle has the Angel of the North and Middlesbrough Gibbereesh Kapoor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gigantic string underpants. Both were claimed to be important instruments of regeneration yet, years on, both places are top of any indices of social deprivation, unemployment and poverty. Bombastic works like these, and Hirst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, are only ever about the sculptor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vanity, bank balance and visibility in the papers. They are not about art or sculpture. In Verity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case she is out of scale, inappropriate and irrelevant to Ilfracombe.<\/p>\n

And, naturally, like all the large sculptures of Hirst it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the only one. There will be an edition of them (plus any number of artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proofs) appropriately priced according to what some thuggish tosser billionaire from Uzbekistan is prepared to pay to have it mounted on the roof of his gold palace.<\/p>\n

David Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Jackdaw, October 2012<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Damien Hirst has loaned for 20 years to the north Devon seaside resort of Ilfracombe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in which he has one of his many residences \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a 20-metre high sculpture of a pregnant woman wielding a sword and scales, called Verity. Made of glass fibre with a bronze effect finish (which is a bit tacky-Essex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40,185,110],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment","tag-david-lee","tag-ilfracombe","tag-verity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}