Germaine Greer turns on Robert Hughes

Germaine Greer has given fellow Aussie Robert Hughes (both pictured) a good going over in today’s Guardian over his rather bufferish take on Damien Hirst. The art critic, long an enemy of Hirst’s and other YBAs (young British artists), used Sunday night’s Channel 4 film The Mona Lisa Curse to condemn Hirst for "functioning like a commercial brand" and destroying any true understanding of art in the public's mind by placing importance on the price tag alone.

Hughes has got the wrong end of the stick, says Greer. "Watching Robert Hughes shape up to Damien Hirst has been fun, but it would have been more fun if Hughes had been able to lay a glove on his quarry. The critic swung wildly but the artist was always beyond his reach. Hirst is quite frank about what he doesn't do. He doesn't paint his triumphantly vacuous spot paintings - the best spot paintings by Damien Hirst are those painted by Rachel Howard. His undeniable genius consists in getting people to buy them. Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing. To develop so strong a brand on so conspicuously threadbare a rationale is hugely creative - revolutionary even."

To ram the point home, she observes how Hughes misses the point of Hirst, whose Sotheby's sale a week ago made him £111m. Observes Greer: "His dead cow (Hirst's Golden Calf, which fetched £10.3m) is a lineal descendant of the [biblical] Golden Calf. Hughes is sensitive enough to pick up the resonance. "One might as well be in Forest Lawn [the famous LA cemetery] contemplating a loved one," he shouts at Hirst's calf with the golden hooves, but does not realise it is Hirst who has put that idea into his head. Instead he asserts that there is no resonance in Hirst's work. Bob dear, the Sotheby's auction was the work."

She adds: "I have known Hughes and liked him all my adult life, but I have also disapproved of him pretty consistently. Everybody loves it when Hughes goes off on a rant about the schlock of the new, but he is too easily seduced into blaming the wrong people."

Meanwhile, questions are now being asked as to how Hirst did so well last week. The Sunday Times claims that the record-breaking prices were achieved largely because Hirst's two principal dealers, Jay Jopling and Larry Gagosian, "propped up" the sale by buying large quantities of the work themselves and by bidding up many of the other lots. Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the Fine Art Fund, who was sat next to Jopling at the sale, said there was some "protectionism" and that he saw the dealer bid for a "lousy piece" which was likely to do badly.
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