you were the same as me, but you wised up,

damien hirst and lady gaga: evil masterminds or delusional artists?

damien hirst is like the lady gaga of the contemporary art industry. he is shocking, transgresses tradition art practices, reinvents himself every few years, makes elusive and grandiose statements as to what his art is actually about, he refers to god a lot, is mega loaded, obviously has a be-dazzler, relentlessly considers himself an artist devoted to his art, and is adored by many and loathed by many more.

he and lady gaga have absolutely everything with the exception of biological sex, gender, and preferred “medium of art” in common (i would bet that he even has the same meat dress rotting in his closet as lady g does).

but so what? what does this mean? they are destined to be set up on a not so blind date with one another? maybe, but it would probably end in either damien placing lady gaga in a glass case with formaldehyde and selling it for 15 million dollars or lady gaga plucking all the diamonds off of his “for the love of god” diamond skull and getting them surgically implanted into her pupils and eyelash follicles.

so i think it isn’t a matter of saying they are a match made in hell, but rather that they are long lost siblings, or maybe he is her father? oh, i am kidding. i’m just making parallels between their careers, and obviously i am just as confounded about hirst as i am gaga, because it is hard to know whether or not they take themselves seriously as artists or as business tycoons. like gaga, hirst is a brand. for the love of saatchi, hirst is famous, and he maintained his fame by wielding bullshit to collectors. as long as there is a product, an object, a stuffed sheep to sell, then there is interest from the art industry, just like as long as there are triangulated cheek apparatus, cds, and vaginal blood nail pollish (lady gaga’s period blood is gold by the way (courtesy joke by mary spring)), then there is a grotesquely famous pop “star” with millions of monster fans.

it is pretty absurd that these people; 1. exist, 2. are famous, 3. have not been assissanted. i mean, i don’t think they are that harmful to the general public. i like making fun of damien hirst just as much as i like simultaneously making fun of lady gaga while singing along to her “marry the night” hit, which makes little to no sense. but on the other hand, they are such hyper-manufactured symbols of capitalism that they are hard to ignore and just laugh off as if they are one hit wonders. because they aren’t, they have been famous and rich for a while now, and i don’t see either of their careers dwindling even though their creative originality copped out long ago. and maybe this doesn’t matter to the general public, or art collectors, or music producers, but i think this matters to people who actually give a fuck about real art. art that has a message beyond, “buy me!” art that creates interest not because it costs 15 million dollars but because it costs absolutely nothing. art that is created because a person is talented at their craft, not a person with a talented publicist, and art that manages to transcend norms and reflect upon the reality of how fucked up the world is. both lady gaga and damien hirst sort of reflect the reality of how fucked up the world is, but it certainly wasn’t their intention. part of me thinks they are truly evil masterminds, in that they fooled everyone into thinking they were creative geniuses and made many lives over worth of cash in doing so, but i also think that they whole-heartedly think of themselves as great, hardworking, successful artists who deserve everything they have worked for and created, and are delusional enough to think they are actually positively impacting the art and music worlds.

i guess it is all a matter of opinion. they are not ever going to come clean and say, “haha, oh guys i was just kidding about all that shit i made as being meaningful and subversive, i just wanted to buy a yacht, so i copied john lekay/madonna, and you guys thought i was special and paid for a yacht and a lot.”

god, they may be ridiculous, but aren’t we even more-so? the art world is just as corrupt as any other facet of humanity, and it feels disheartening to have realized this so soon, like finding out santa claus isn’t real, it is like, “shh, art doesn’t exist.”