It officially opens tomorrow. The super-retrospective at Tate Modern dedicated to YBA’s champion Damien Hirst will probably be one of the most talked-about artistic events of 2012.
The exhibition describes, with more than 70 works, the artist’s career, from the beginnings as a student at GoldsmithsCollege in the late ’80s, to the phantasmagorical For the Love of God (2007) – which reigns in the Turbine Hall, turned into a sort of security room. Among the first of many opinions on the exhibition and the artist, there is one word that frequently recurs: “money”. There is quite a debate about economic speculation, which would have made Hirst one of the most popular artists of the last thirty years, who winks at the Middle East (the show is sponsored by QMA – Qatar Museum Authority), who trivialises art (you can imagine the amount of gadgets); the artist of the 8,601 diamonds used to cover a skull, of Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’s shark (1991), of the tropical butterflies flying in In and Out of Love (1991)… and the Hirst whose smiling face is suitable just for magazines covers… But once again, one of the biggest contemporary art stars has achieved his goal: to be a top class phenomenon. The exhibition will be on view until September 9 to give the chance to everyone to understand why all the aspects that have filled the newspapers have created, for better or for worse, an icon of our time.