David Hockney vs. Damien Hirst
Craft is having a bit of a comeback in the arts as “materialist” shows are being curated and sculpture in various forms as well as design are integrating. Hockney who recently received an Order of Merit from the Royal Queen of England will be having a largely anticipated new landscape exhibition at the Royal Academy later this month and along with it a poster advertising, “All the works here were made personally by the artist, himself.” On that note, Damien Hirst will be having a big retrospective at Tate Modern. The spectrum of art has led to a lot of divides between camps of thought throughout its history. Here, we have a landscape painter who has recently turned down a royal portrait commission and thinks of prizes as suspect, and on the other, we have an artist with just as much commitment but uses his skills towards consistently subverting the art system reflected also in his lawless approach to “making art”. Are we still an “either / or” society?
