I admit I was predisposed not to like Damien Hirst’s exhibition at Tate Modern, so in that sense it didn't disappoint. It’s big stuff and it’s boys’ stuff. The severed head of a cow in its pool of blood serving the appetites of flies set to die in a fly-killing contraption is ‘amazing’, as one guy said. And, that is the tone of the show. A vast array of pharmaceuticals is amazing, so, too, is a golden case of glinting diamond-like objects; bisected cows (inspiring people to biology disquisitions) and sharks (quite small ones) in tanks and a great big bull’s-eye design on the wall made up of flies, all amazing. The Jacuzzi-size ashtray full of butt ends is… Anyway, then there are the butterflies. Thousands of them provide the material for mandala-like 2-D works and then passing the ashtrays, one reaches the room where live butterflies flutter and fall about. What should be uplifting, isn’t. One of the last rooms? A shop for DH paraphernalia. I bought two postcards: one of them of a hairdryer keeping a ping-pong ball afloat in the air, entitled ‘What Goes Up Must Come Down’. A comment on the value of Hirst’s work? I read that a Qatari customer spent £9.7m acquiring Hirst’s pill cabinet, Lullaby Spring. The show at Tate is sponsored by the Qatar Museum’s Authority. If you pay a lot, it makes sense to protect your investment.
