Tuesday 16 October 2012

Lucky, lucky Ilfracombe - they'll spend the next 20 years staring at Damien Hirst's pregnant monstrosity

I'm definitely going private next time 

She carries a sword in one hand, she stands 65ft. tall, she's called Verity, andshe's apparently a "modern allegory of truth and justice". (In which case, I'm a two-bedroom maisonette in Solihull.) And she is being put in her place as I write this.

This disgustingly ugly statue is the work of Damien Hirst, who has lent it to Ilfracombe - a Victorian holiday resort in North Devon - for the next twenty years. It will stand on the pier, where the poor folk who live there and those with sufficiently strong stomachs to visit will be unable to avoid seeing it. Here's the view from another angle, which might not actually cause everyone who catches sight of it to hurl chunks (if they manage to look away quickly enough):


I've written before about our liberal establishment's babyish belief that sheer hugeness somehow imbues trashy, shallow works of art with SIGNIFICANCE (read it here). All it does, of course, is reveal the work's moral and emotional emptiness.

Verity's thuggish mundanity reminds my wife of the The Kiss, a deeply tawdry example of monumental ineptness outraging anyone of sensibility forced to visit St Pancras Station:


We fought a war to prevent fascist bullies bossing us about. That evidently didn't work. 

We stayed in Ilfracombe for a few days some three years' ago on our way back from Cornwall. It wasn't exactly the jumpingest burg I've ever visited, but it had its charms, including a series of quirky beaches reached via four man-made tunnels dug in the 1820s, quite a lot of handsomely confident Victorian and Edwardian seaside architecture, and a rather pleasant promenade, parts of which had evidently been recently modernised in a fairly inoffensive way. 

I initially assumed Ilfracombe had agreed to countenance Hirst's nauseating erection because the town has seen better days (to put it mildly) and probably needs all the publicity it can get. But then I remembered being repulsed by The Scallop, a fantastically unsuitable and unsympathetic piece of monumental sculpture by arch-pseud Maggi Hambling, which some idiot or other agreed should stand on the beach at Aldeburgh, a truly lovely and smugly well-off coastal town in Suffolk:


Why can't these awful, puffed-up, talentless wretches simply sod off and leave the rest of us in peace?

11 comments:

  1. I have it on good authority that this sculpture represents the disembowelled body of Ms Tracey Emin. Perhaps this fact will make it more acceptable to you?

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    1. In that case I shall visit the town as soon as possible and will endeavour to buy a 12" replica of the piece to place on our dining table, where our guests can fully enjoy it while tucking into the main course.

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  2. My breakfast was spoilt this morning by the appearance of the misandrist Harriet Harman on To-Day desperately trying to climb on to the Savile band-wagon [she wants yet another inquiry - an "over-arching" one, this time.] I seem to have spent years listening to this inane ...person gas-bagging away. Perhaps Damian could do a separate sculpture of her - she obviously wants to be remembered for something.

    Or better still, we could adopt the Inuit practice of putting women who have outlived their usefulness [or are just plain irritating]on an ice floe and float them down the Denmark Strait. By the way and excuse my ignorance, but are Ms Harman and Tessa Jowell two separate people? If so, stick 'em both on the floe.

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    1. Unfortunately for Harriet Harperson, she was the legal officer for the NCCL (now Liberty) in 1978, when it supported some incredibly dodgy policies on lowering the age of consent. If I were Hattie, I'd keep my gob firmly shut on this particular issue. God, she's awful!

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  3. There appears to be a mood of Philistinism at large in your blog. One can only regret this. As dear Nicky Scelerota was saying to Tracey and moi yesterday as we were on our second pot of Lapsong Souchong, with a coke chaser obviously, at his personal suite of Georgian themed withdrawing rooms at the Tat Modem, " Where is Eastbourne?" How we laughed.

    But have you noticed how Damien has managed to construct it so that the foetus appears to follow you round the beach? Too delicious. I despair of the soul of any one who is not deeply touched by this sub-Tech College GCSE standard carpentry course project piece of shite.

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    1. Brian, I'd be cautious about using a phrase like "piece of shite" where leading artists such as Gilbert and George and Chris Ofili might read it - because you just know what's going to happen next.

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  4. I have made the point before.Which of our national treasures is now safe?

    The Savile cemetery memorial is no more. Other tasteful tributes have been defaced. Please God that no one will follow the trend, for example by plastering this Eastbourne-quality work of art with "Baby on Board" stickers. Any suggestion to improve Hurst's work by adding to it a representation of a large, part-time, minority community NHS midwife with stirrups and probing tools at the ready would also be move in the wrong direction.

    Thank goodness we are all united in our admiration for the subtly and tastefully sculpted tribute to the Women of WW on the otherwise architecturally antiquated Whitehall.

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    1. Yes, the "Women of World War II" memorial certainly brings a lump to my stomach. Perhaps that's because they all appear to be so terribly thin. The result of rationing, one presumes.

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  5. hmm. i'm lucky. i have visited ilfracombe last spring, so i can be sure i will not go back and meet this... stg

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    1. A mass boycott of the town by visitors to encourage the authorities to get rid of this eyesore might just work!

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  6. Sorry to go against the grain but I actually love Verity. It is spectacular and celebrates womanhood and pregnancy. Thank you Damien!

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