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Fine art tips on How To Paint Acrylic Abstracts with Ken Done on Colour In Your Life

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In this fine art TV show episode Ken Done is interviewed with Colour In Your Life about painting, drawing, art workshops, art tips and art techniques. Help support CIYL's growth around the globe and become a patron of the arts today at: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4830007 https://www.youtube.com/c/ColourinyourlifeAu New fine art TV show episodes loaded every Wednesday AEST.

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Some people argue that Damien Hirst is a great artist. Some say he is an execrable artist, and others put him somewhere more boring in between. They are all missing the point. Damien Hirst isn't an artist. His works may draw huge crowds when they go on show in a five-month-long blockbuster retrospective at Tate Modern next week. But they have no artistic content and are worthless as works of art. They are, therefore, worthless financially.

If you want a pickled shark in a tank, you don't have to pay the $12m Steve Cohen paid for the one selected by Hirst. You only pay that much for the artistic content that Hirst has added to it. If there isn't any, what are you buying? You could argue that you are buying an investment. But that depends on people in the future valuing the artistic content in your shark even more highly than you do. If they don't, what are you left with? A shark in a tank, which is what you bought.

I've coined the term Con Art, short for contemporary conceptual art and for art that cons people. Contemporary conceptual art? All art is a concept in the sense that it's the product of thought. But all art must also be a creation. You have to be able to see art; it can't just be a projected thought. That's how the emperor got dressed; his expensive robes were all in the minds of people around him, when in reality he had nothing on.

It's often been proposed, seriously, that Damien Hirst is a greater artist than Michelangelo because he had the idea for a shark in a tank whereas Michelangelo didn't have the idea for his David. What separates Michelangelo from Damien Hirst is that Michelangelo was an artist and Damien Hirst isn't. Michelangelo's extremely subtle, profoundly moving ideas were manifest in what he made; they weren't pretentious profanities tossed off the top of his head.

The trouble with found objects is that you can't tell just by looking at them what the person who put them in front of you is trying to tell you unless he or she has altered them in some meaningful way. Nor does the act of placing something in an art gallery, whether it's a stack of bricks, a bin bag or an unmade bed, automatically make it a work of art, any more than framing a canvas with paint on it automatically makes it a painting. Art can be made out of anything, as Picasso famously demonstrated when he put a bicycle saddle and handlebars together and made a bull's head, but art has to be made.

Where did this idea that anything could be a work of art come from? It's generally believed to have come from Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, a urinal was sent to an art exhibition in New York, supposedly by Duchamp. But recent research has shown that the urinal was actually submitted by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Her gesture was an early feminist attack on a male society. She didn't claim the urinal was a work of art. She was taking the piss.

Duchamp stole her idea much later when he began to promote himself as the founding father of modern art. The whole idea of the found object - the basis of conceptual art - was a con from the start. Why did the idea that anything could be art catch on? Con artists, cashing in on Duchamp's scam, chose a few found objects and sold them to gullible collectors as gilt-edged investments, with the help of a small coterie of dealers and museum curators who wanted to be at the forefront of art no matter what the public thought. The bubble that is Con Art blew up, like the sub-prime mortgage business, in the smoke-and-mirrors world of financial markets, where fortunes have been made on nothing.

The art education world, strapped for funds, has clung to the Con Art bandwagon, because thinking costs less than making. It doesn't involve learning craft skills in studios. Damien Hirst's ghastly reputation glows in the black hole at the heart of British culture.

Art is a collective reality. When we look at a Rembrandt, we all know we are looking at the same thing, responding to the same source of experience outside ourselves. We might respond slightly differently, according to our natures, but the heart of what Rembrandt has given us is something we know we can share. What art shows might be painful, even vicious, but the showing is beautiful because it is shared. That is the optimism in all art - it helps us to build our collective consciousness on which the future of civilisation depends.

Real art is always positive, for if it wasn't why would anyone make it or want it? Con art is negative: it gives us nothing. That's why you'd be well advised to sell your Hirsts, if you've been unfortunate enough to acquire any, before they become worthless. Because worthless they will be, when everyone realises that they've given nobody anything. Damien Hirst's "works" are only of value if they're works of art. They're not. That's the naked truth.
'Con Art - Why you ought to sell your Damien Hirsts while you can', by Julian Spalding, is published 1 April and available via Amazon Kindle
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Julian Spalding: Damien Hirsts are the sub-prime of the art world

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Some people argue that Damien Hirst is a great artist. Some say he is an execrable artist, and others put him somewhere more boring in between. They are all missing the point. Damien Hirst isn't an artist. His works may draw huge crowds when they go on show in a five-month-long blockbuster retrospective at Tate Modern next week.

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1. What do the careers of artists like Ken Done and Damien Hirst tell us about the influence of critics, dealers, art advisers and private collectors?                                                                                                     Were Done’s and Hirst’ unfavourable reviews owing to the fact that they are ‘not good artists’ or because their work, with its strong market sensibility, challenges the various assumptions about artists and their careers? (Peter Anderson, ‘Ken Done’s image problem’, Art Monthly Australia, 1995, pp.4-6 )                                

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1. What do the careers of artists like Ken Done and Damien Hirst tell us about the influence of critics, dealers, art advisers and private collectors?                                                                                                     Were Done’s and Hirst’ unfavourable reviews owing to the fact that they are ‘not good artists’ or because their work, with its strong market sensibility, challenges the various assumptions about artists and their careers? (Peter Anderson, ‘Ken Done’s image problem’, Art Monthly Australia, 1995, pp.4-6 )                                

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239504/As-prices-Damien-Hirsts-works-plummet-pity-credulous-saps-spent-fortunes-tosh.html

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At last, the real shark is exposed: As prices for Damien Hirst's works plummet, pity the credulous saps who spent fortunes on his tosh

Not everyone recognises that the artist emperor is naked, but in the art world there's a growing unease that his clothes might be looking a bit threadbare.

In decades to come, people will look back and wonder why, in fashionable circles at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, rubbish such as this was displayed as art.

Nonsensical

With just an 'E' in his Art A-level, Hirst was delighted to be admitted to an art school that did not seem to rate skill - his tutor at Goldsmiths College, Michael Craig-Martin, was a 'minimalist conceptualist' whose most notorious work is a half-full glass of water entitled An Oak Tree.
Hirst, who had a placement at a mortuary while a student, decided to make death his unique selling point. Now, many great artists have painted the dead and the dying, but Hirst's approach was more that of a butcher.

Saatchi offered Hirst a £50,000 commission to do whatever he liked and the result was the famous shark in formaldehyde in a giant glass cabinet (pictured), which he called The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living - a pretentious title that impressed the gullible.

Hirst followed up the shark by having a dead cow and calf split in two and exhibited in separate glass containers. He then diversified into dead sheep, and there was publicity beyond price when an exhibit featuring a rotting cow and bull was banned by New York public health officials.

When he moved on to spot paintings (rows of randomly coloured circles), Hirst candidly explained that he was useless at painting, so it was left to his assistants to produce them in their hundreds.

In thrall to the YBA, the British Council appointed Emin to represent the UK at a great Venice art fair. Incredibly, she has since been appointed professor of drawing in the Royal Academy, a distinguished institution founded in the 18th century to promote artistic excellence.

One of the tragedies of all this is that young people even now are being encouraged by the art establishment to believe that self-promotion and controversy matter more than talent and hard work, and real artists are being ignored or sidelined because they don't fit the conceptual template. But the tide is turning at last.

Patronising

In recent weeks even the BBC's arts editor has admitted that many curators secretly despise much conceptual work, and critics have begun tentatively to query if it hasn't been overrated.
People are challenging lofty and disdainful voices such as those of Serota and his colleagues and point out that they're peddling rubbish.

Ruth Dudley Edwards's Killing The Emperors, a satire on the world of conceptual art, has just been published by Allison and Busby.

VIDEO: A selection of Hirst works that have sold in the past...

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At last, the real shark is exposed: As prices for Damien Hirst's works plummet, pity the credulous saps who spent fortunes on his tosh

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Not everyone recognises that the artist emperor is naked, but in the art world there's a growing unease that his clothes might be looking a bit threadbare. In decades to come, people will look back and wonder why, in fashionable circles at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, rubbish such as this was displayed as art.

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2. Can artists influence their own career paths? How has Damien Hirst and Ken Done gone about managing and promoting their respective careers? 

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2. Can artists influence their own career paths? How has Damien Hirst and Ken Done gone about managing and promoting their respective careers? 

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Newport Street Gallery | About Damien Hirst's art collection

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Newport Street Gallery presents exhibitions of work from Damien Hirst's art collection. Located in Vauxhall, south London. Free admission.

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3. How can a powerful group of individuals - artist, dealers, art advisers, private collectors and critics - influence Damien Hirst’s reputation, career and sale of his art?

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3. How can a powerful group of individuals - artist, dealers, art advisers, private collectors and critics - influence Damien Hirst’s reputation, career and sale of his art?

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4. Is it realistic to think critics can remain independent of the art market? And is it such a bad thing if the influence of the market spreads beyond advertising and into editorials and critical writing? (Lawrence Alloway)

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4. Is it realistic to think critics can remain independent of the art market? And is it such a bad thing if the influence of the market spreads beyond advertising and into editorials and critical writing? (Lawrence Alloway)

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5. What role has François Pinault and his private museums - Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, Venice - played in rebuilding and repositioning Damien Hirst's reputation and value within the market? 

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5. What role has François Pinault and his private museums - Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, Venice - played in rebuilding and repositioning Damien Hirst's reputation and value within the market? 

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Consider this within the context of the exhibition entitled “Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable.”
http://www.artnews.com/2017/05/08/a-disastrous-damien-hirst-show-in-venice/

http://www.artnews.com/2017/04/21/one-mans-trash-is-damien-hirsts-treasure-in-venice-the-artist-offers-his-grandest-work-yet/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/16/damien-hirst-treasures-from-the-wreck-of-the-unbelievable-review-venice

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Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

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Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable Damien Hirst Until 3 December 2017 'Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable'.

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'The Chaser's War on Everything'

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Parody of 'The Davinci Code' from the television series 'The Chaser's War on Everything'

Directed by Craig Melville

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Ken Done - Australian artist - limited edition prints, swimwear, books and accessories.

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Sydney gallery has many original artworks, prints, books, swimwear and accessories for sale. Visit our online shop now. New book release.

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The Chaser's War on Everything - Pro Hart Memorial