The Exhibition-auction As Media and Marketing Performance Art
At the time and afterwards the exhibition-auction has been described as a kind of marketing and media/communications performance art. In a Guardian newspaper article, Germaine Greer said, "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."
The performative nature was later addressed in the exhibition at Tate Modern, "Pop Life: Art in a material world", to which critic Ben Lewis found it very offensive: "... the gallery texts have the temerity to claim that the greed-fuelled auction sale was a work of performance art in itself. That’s just the same as Stockhausen calling 9/11 a work of art." Interestingly, another kind of media intervention occurred at the time of the Sotheby's exhibition and auction, as Ben Lewis was banned from the press event. He wrote, "Only carefully vetted art critics will fill the press pen and sympathetic TV channels pack the camera podium. Several members of the press thought to be critical of Hirst has been refused accreditation — among them me."
Read more about this topic: Beautiful Inside My Head Forever
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