On 3/18/07, Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> This historical period blows.
Angel mentioned Julian Stallabrass about a month ago (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070219/003637.html>), which reminded me of Stallabrass's smart criticism of (the mind-bogglingly stupid art of the most overrated British conceptual art phenomenon) Damien Hirst in New Left Review: "In and Out of Love with Damien Hirst," New Left Review I/216, March-April 1996, <http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stallabrass_julian/essays/HIRST.pdf>.
In it he describes several of Hirst's pieces, among which is "a shark displayed in a large tank of formaldehyde, coupled with the title, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." What does the artist say about the shark? Stallabrass quotes him: "not moving forwards . . . just moving." The stupefying and stupefyingly expensive* shark (against the artist's plan) slowly decomposing in formaldehyde, "not moving forwards . . . just moving," is a fitting symbol -- or rather a joke at the expense -- of the workers and intellectuals of the North, which makes ours the age of neither here nor there.
Who has a revolutionary potential in the age of neither here nor there? Those who dwell in the informal sector, the space of neither here nor there, uprooted from the countryside but excluded from the most urbane cores of great cities, who are neither clearly wage workers nor definitely petty producers.
* <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/design/01voge.html> October 1, 2006 Art Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks By CAROL VOGEL
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Charles Saatchi, the advertising magnate and collector, had commissioned Mr. Hirst to make the work for £50,000, now about $95,000. At the time that sum was considered so enormous that the British tabloid The Sun heralded the transaction with the headline "50,000 for Fish Without Chips."
But as a result of inadequate preservation efforts, time was not kind to the original, which slowly decomposed until its form changed, its skin grew deeply wrinkled, and the solution in the tank turned murky. (It didn't help that the Saatchi Gallery added bleach to the solution, hastening the decay, staff members at Mr. Hirst's studio said.) In 1993 Mr. Saatchi's curators finally had the shark skinned and stretched the skin over a fiberglass mold.
"It didn't look as frightening," Mr. Hirst recalled. "You could tell it wasn't real. It had no weight."
In recent years Mr. Saatchi has been selling off works by the Young British Artists that he collected so voraciously in the 90's, and two years ago "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" was purchased by the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, who lives in Greenwich, Conn. He paid $8 million for it, one of the highest prices at the time for a work of contemporary art.
The impetus was a call from Larry Gagosian, the Manhattan dealer, alerting him to Mr. Saatchi's intention to sell. Mr. Cohen knew the shark's history and its problems: that the piece was never properly injected with formaldehyde, and what was floating in the tank was a fiberglass shadow of its former self. But in a funny way, that too had its appeal.
"Is it real? Isn't it real?" Mr. Cohen said. "I liked the whole fear factor."
But Mr. Hirst didn't. When he learned of Mr. Cohen's plans to buy the 22-ton work, he volunteered to replace the shark. "I frequently work on things after a collector has them," the artist said. "I recently called a collector who owns a fly painting because I didn't like the way it looked, so I changed it slightly."
As it turns out, Mr. Cohen is paying for the replacement project, although he declined to say how much it would cost, other than to call the expense "inconsequential." (The procedure involving the injection of formaldehyde alone adds up to about $100,000, including labor and materials.) -- Yoshie