Trew Musings with Russell Brand: Damien Hirst and Context

Every Monday I do a bit of talking about books l like at an event called Trew Musings in East London.

At the first musings I spoke about one of my favourite books Sapiens given to me by Damien Hirst who showed me the importance of context, context, context.

Filmed & edited by Jenny May Finn
Motion Graphics by Ger Carney

[ChrisMcSweeney]

Kurt Vonnegut on modern artists: "[They have] entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid."

[DabIMON]

My definition of art is this: The moment someone considers something to be art, that thing is art.

[salilseth]

Hi Russell first of all I would like to say that I love your show - keep up the awesome work man. I also wanted to say that last night I saw a movie called "kill the messenger" - I'm not sure if you have or were going to talk about this movie but I think it's of value to discuss as it highlights another way the US government has sacrificed the good of the people to further or protect their own interests. Plus if you talk about this issue it'll be an extra bonus to contribute to the show for me personally. Love and respect from Australia.

[_Ikelos]

Modernism and post-modernism have never been art and were never meant to be art.
From the start they were always social instruments, weird things made for the sake of making weird things to get a reaction from people. Pure shock value, without any soul or meaning.
Art is giving birth to your vision, expressing yourself, Modernism in general is just trying really hard to be a clown.
Today they evolved their social purpose, from creating shock value, to creating social barriers, an excuse to fake being an intellectual  and sensitive individual, creating an atmosphere that pressures people to agree to whatever the fuck they're told.

"You see, this cut canvas symbolizes anguish and penile dysfunction"
" uhh...oh yeah of course.I can totally see that. 10/10 - would buy to snob all my friends and try to hide my lack of self-confidence behind the awkwardness and pressure i provide others with."

[terrymackamckenzie]

I'm a fan of yours Russ. But for a long time Modern art, particularly Postmodern art, has been used as a tool by the establishment to keep the minds of the commoners flaccid. It is the 'Emperor's New Clothes', a reference to Hans Christian Anderson oft quoted story.

Postmodernists Yoko Ono and John Cage got funding from the Rockefeller foundation to fund their 'pieces'. Worst of all Cage, Ono, La Monte Young among others in the Fluxus group, formed a pretentious clique and were particularly cruel to people who could not perceive their 'works of genius'. Henry Flynt was part of the Fluxus movement but became a dissenter because of the arrogance of the ringleaders and the superiority complexes they formed. He despised the fact they overestimated their importance in reference to the rest of mankind and called those in the Fluxus movement 'The Debris of Privilege'.

Personally, I love when people are creative and come up with inspirational work. But Postmodernist want the air of a refined noble intellect without actually doing anything.

Just something to think about; I still love your work. I hope, really hope, you can do a synopsis, or at least something relating to Shakespeare's work. That'd be deep and something worth directing our mental energies towards, instead of Post Modern meanderings to nowhere. Noam Chomsky has given particularly scathing comments about Post Modernists, particularly in France.

All that aside, I love your work and your channel!!! Just keepin' it real.

[painterchick]

Russell I love your trews but totally disagree on your endorsement of Hirst. It's not his idea but done decade ago by marcel Duchamp so why should his grossly overpriced works be touted as something of genius. Do u realise how many artists are out there doing the same thing, with no talent, trying hard to produce shock value to cover up their lack of talent. No, it leaves most people feeling dry and unmoved. Art inspires. That's what art does so sorry but we're tired of postmodern artists flogging the same old BS over and over, the same self referential, self aggrandising, over priced, bloated Stuff that is passing for art. These artists are sell outs to the highest bidder. They're sole purpose is to help those trillionaires who acquired their riches through Ill means to launder money and to make the 99% look more apart from the one percent who want to feel they belong to some exclusive club of cultured and uncultured. Well it's clear to me that the art they put on their walls in an ironic way aptly describes the buyer as well as the artist, their psyche, the means and use of their wealth and the principles on which they base their life.

[chrisnichols]

Truth. Everything is beautiful when you look at it the right way :)

[TezLivin]

I had read that after Mr Hirst made over £1oo million quid at an auction of his 'ART' he actually sacked all the workers who had produced it. The money spinning world of so called modern art was given a major boost in my opinion when the Saatchis having sold the electorate Thatcher, then decided that the public could be conned into buying any shit with the right publicity.Celebrity rules, OK. 

[stibba]

hey russell, i saw your movie/documentary about drrugs in school, it was amazing

[isaacamor]

Just finished reading a few pages of your book. Bought it a few days ago and already I am hooked in. Such an inspiring and informative book, this will help me out a lot!

[KPater-mfje]

Supporting Damien Hirst is a bad decision. I've done some digging up on Hirst's friends, using his "For the Love of God", an old (baby?) skull coated with platinum and encrusted with allegedly conflict-free diamonds, as a guiding thread.

Warning: lots and lots of text ahoy! (might consider posting this on my blog and then reposting the link here)

He produced it in 2007 (for apparently 14 million pounds), whereupon it was debuted in the White Cube. The White Cube is a private art gallery in London that is in itself a suspicious object. It was owned by Jay Jopling (who also owns four other galleries, including one in Hong Kong -- definitely not used to smuggle precious Chinese art works, nope, not at all). Jay is a good friend of Hirst (as well as Emin and Quinn, whose names also frequently crop up while I did a quick background check on this whole matter), and has debuted a lot of Hirst's works in his White Cube (including that one with a shark encased in formaldehyde). He is also the son of Baron Jopling, a member of the House of Lords and of the Conservative Party. Baron Michael Jopling has served stints as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury as well as Minister of Agriculture under Margeret Thatcher's regime.
Jay's gallery where For The Love of God was inaugurated closed in 2012 (for unknown reasons). 
But more about Hirst and Jopling. They became friends in the '80s (apparently they had met in Manhattan, where Jopling was organizing some kind of project with "post-war American artists" that involved "donating" art for free). Jopling was a source of encouragement and support for Hirst, motivating him to produce the formaldehyde-shark and the diamond-skull, both of which first appeared in White Cube Hoxton. Suddenly, in 2012, he opened three galleries -- one in the UK (London again apparently) (this one was made from a warehouse -- think of this as a pretty HQ for art smuggling and black market deals), one in the Hong Kong (like I insinuated above, it's likely that there's a Rush Hour scenario here -- the relatives of prominent British politicians and aristocrats aren't famous for being honest towards the Chinese, let's just say that much), and another in Sao Paulo (I suppose he wanted to live closer to the drug baron district).

Now let's look at another interesting figure who features prominently in Hirst's artistic background: Mr. Charles Saatchi.
Before his business alliance with Jopling, Hirst sold most of his artwork through (or to) Saatchi. He comes from a rich Jewish-Iraqi family residing in Bagdad, where his father worked as a textile merchant (the infamous persian rug sellers -- I know this much from experience, because one of my mother's friends worked as an operator in a rug factory in the South of the USA: rug factories are f***ing ruthless. The air is dry and filled with cloth dust that fills your lungs and nostrils, the heat is unbearable and there is no ventilation or climate control, and the management sack the women who are to sick to keep on weaving and a day later get some other unfortunate impoverished woman to take her place. These factories are frequently under inspection in the USA -- but in Iraq, of course, inspection is non-existent).
In the late 40's they relocated to London, where Saatchi senior again started up a business with textile mills. Viewing Pollock in the MOMA inspired young Charles to take up a career in "art".
In the 70's, Charles Saatchi and his brother Maurice started up their own advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Apparently the fake advertising agency that Don Draper works for in Mad Men is loosely based on Saatchi & Saatchi, because Mad Men's first season reminds me of S&S's first big campaigns: Silk Cut cigarettes and Margeret Thatcher's political campaign (with the famous slogan "Labour Isn't Working!").
Oh hai Margeret Thatcher -- fancy seeing her name crop up a second time here. (not much of a coincidence. Like Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice". Coincidinks don't just /happen/).
S&S grew into a colossal advertising monster, with over 600 branches. Charles and his brother then founded a second ad firm, called M&C Saatchi, another giant, famous for handling the commercials for the British Airways.
As early as 1985, Charles opened up his own gallery and started to dabble in modern art, filled his collection with Warhols and, a few years later, Hirsts and Quinns as well.
By the 90's, he had become a renowned patron of "modern art", and his name became synonymous with kitsch and pretentiousness. Some suspicion was cast as to the veracity and credibility of his so-called galleries.
(in the 90's there was a scandal that caused an outrage when one of his new exhibits, a deliberate provocation of the public, referred in rather bad taste to the families of Myra Hindley's victims)

Saatchi was and is an absolute nutcase. A screwball, a fruitcake, a looney tune, a knothead, a kook.
For god's sake, the man opened his own synagogue and /named it after himself/.
(hah, and some journalist for the Times called him "reclusive". He's about as reclusive as friggin Napoleon Bonaparte)
He also wrote his own autobiography, which nobody bought, causing him to order his Personal Assistants to buy as many copies as they can in order to get his book onto the bestseller's list (I guess bribing editors and journalists was out of the question).
He and his brother are in the top 500 richest people in the UK (not counting his innumerable assets, I suppose)
Recently, in 2012/2013, a scandal with Saatchi came to light, when he tried to strangle his wife in public in a London restaurant (the man's over 70 years old, so he must have a tough hand). During the divorce proceedings, his wife revealed the truth of their broken marriage, and how he once even "disciplined" her for going to a friend's birthday party without his permission.

Nice pack of friends that Hirst has got here, I must say.

Let's take a closer look now at the diamond-skull...
Hirst did not actually make it. Here controversy begins. Sloth supreme -- Damien Hirst hardly lifted a finger in the making of the skull.
The skull itself is a real human skull, two or so centuries old apparently (bought in an antique store in Islington for some reason). The platinum casting and the placing of the diamonds on the skull was done by Jack Du Rose, who kick-started his career with this work and has since become a prominent jeweler for the upper crust. Rather oddly, Jack Du Rose was hired to flesh out how so-and-so many diamonds could fit on a skull of so-and-so many proportions, without being told why he was supposed to design this and who had hired him for the job.
A few years later, and Du Rose's jewelry pieces started to exhibit in the art studio belonging to Jay Jopling's wife, Sam Taylor-Wood (an "artist" herself). In an interview with Solitaire Magazine, Jack says that he looks up to Hirst for creating "marketing into an art form". Jack summed up Hirst's ouevre in a nutshell (as a matter of fact, Andy Warhol was trying out the same approach, business > art). Du Rose specializes in diamonds, other incredibly rare jewels, and gold. He actually travels around the world to look for precious jewels to "work" with (and then sell to, what, the wives of warlords and the daughters of robber-barons? Nobody else can afford the unnecessary crap he's producing).

The diamonds used for the creation of the skull came from Bentley & Skinner (and if it's one thing I learned from Hot Fuzz, it's not to trust a fellow named /Skinner/), a century-old jewelry firm that specifically supplies jewelry to the royal family since the days of Queen Victoria herself.
(recently, some branch of theirs, Graff Jeweler's I think is the name, was robbed in the UK's biggest jewelry heist ever -- 65mil dollars worth of jewels were stolen by two armed men. It all probably happened in a manner like Reservoir Dogs and Payday 2, only with two people instead of half a dozen).

The skull is a big, big source of controversy. Firstly, nobody knows who's bought it. I've read a few articles, and read the wikipedia page, and glossed over interviews with Hirst, and I've arrived at the conclusion that nobody knows for sure whether the skull has been sold at all. Reuters mentions in an article about Bentley & Skinner that the skull was sold for 100 million dollars. But various other sources claim that the skull had been sold for less/more to a gallery/art dealer/drug lord/British blues singer/weird Bond villain living in the mountains of South America -- there are lots of stories. Hirst himself claims that he had sold the skull for 50 million pounds already.
Here's an interesting tidbit I found in the Wikipedia page:
David Lee, editor of The Jackdaw, commented "Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn't sold the skull. It's clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work."
Apparently, he had once tried or is currently trying to sell the skull over Sotheby's. Hm.

[iamhole]

A famous man once said, We all know that Art is not truth, Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth..

[faissalbensefia]

The volume on this video is way too low, please turn it up next time :)

[spyemerson]

yes. again context. i agree. i am a conceptual artist, engaging people through the idea.

[kiragoe]

I love weird art that people think is crap and something they can do themselves. They just look more interesting than boring old portraits or landscapes.

[MELBAWSHIFT]

audio signal (gain) needs to be boosted and compressed

[BillFroog]

Gimme Banksy over Hirst any day... love light peace.

[DjangobeatTV]

Our basic doorway to vibration is sound. I can help!

[bittasweetsymphony]

its easy to see things as art if your life is going well, or your high.
try seeing a truck stop as art as you ride depressed to the job centre.

[tinkzorro]

Are you going to be posting the whole talks on here? please please do.