Hirst apologises for 11 Sept comments

Hirst apologises for 11 Sept comments

British artist Damien Hirst has "apologised unreservedly" for suggesting that the 11 September hijackers had created a "visually stunning" work of art.

news.bbc.co.uk...

personally, i agree with the guy.

- qo.

Its tricky. I voiced the same sentiment on this board several months back. Can we consider it as art.
given reasonable definitions.
unfortunately the thread got corrupted by a few philistines screaming "anti american bastard" as I'm sure this one will.

well we shall see ....
either way, from an objective viewpoint, i don't think it is possible to argue that the images of sep11th are anything but art. they've sold for a great deal of money, primarily in america.

- qo.

Hard to get my head round that the terrorists were artists trying to create works of aesthetic value.

of course they weren't, but that does not necessary mean that they didn't. many of the greatest achievements in science were made through accident. the same can be so for art.

- qo.

I don't think the images are artist.I think they are iconic though.Like the image of the Vietnamese child running down a road after a napalm attack.Or the still from Maradonna's hand of God incident.
I think Hirst should not have to apologise his statement has validity but you would have to disassociate the images from human suffering.He as an artist can those that ,perhaps, were more affected can only see the images as evidence.

It was a pretty big debate here in britland after the event.

the concept is not that the terrorists were artists or that the act was an art work.

it was that the act fulfilled many artistic criteria.

for example, reducing it to simple terms it was a massive visual spectacle that had an amazingly profound impact on the lives of the people who witnessed it.

going further one can suggest the impetus of the terrorists was artistic, the twin towers could have been said to have been an attack on the iconography of america to make a political or theological point.

Its a fascinating concept.

I don't grasp the concept, at least the one he likely is trying to convey. Art as in it's definition of cunning - yes, but that presupposes a plan all of their own fruition & execution, which it was not, their was American collusion in standing down so it could occur, if not full assistance in bring the towers down with explosives in the sub levels.
The visual? No. Though what was beautiful was the light beams set as a memorial; they seemed like a truly ethereal representation.

again, art does not have to be beautiful in the conventional sense to be great art, Is Gurnica "beautiful"

whilst the act of sep 11 was destructive it was not mindless, it was heartfelt expression.

and whilst destructive it also created iconic imagery.

So I suppose London under a mushroom cloud would also be "artistic" ?

The arguement about what is art and what isn't has been floating about for ages. If someone belives something to be artistic then it is. Art is not a black and white issue. It is all about perseption.

"So I suppose London under a mushroom cloud would also be "artistic" ?"

your missing the point slightly.

the discussion is an attempt to apply conventional artistic criteria to the event and analyse wether on some level it can be considered a work of art.

so....

whilst the act of nuking London would be destructive it would not be mindless, it would be heartfelt expression.

and whilst destructive it also would create iconic imagery.

I get it now

whilst the act of nuking London would be destructive it would not be mindless, it would be heartfelt expression.

and whilst destructive it also would create iconic imagery.

exactly.
however I'm wondering if scale is also important.
nuking london would create a similarly massive destructive image as the Sep 11 attack.

but do smaller acts of destruction have less power, for example the nail bombing of that soho pub can't be considered iconic so possibly looses the artistic impact.

maybe the smaller number of casualtys actually humanises the object to the point where one cannot observe it at anything other than an emotive level whilst the nuking of london or sep 11 had such facelessness and was transformed from a shocking one into something more elemental by the media that it de-humanised the effect allowing us to stand back and observe it as somthing other than a loss of human life.

I never thought of watching the planes hitting the towers as art.

But I suppose there are twisted people who think that it is.After all there are people who collect murder pictures and body parts and call it art.

well anything can be considered art, but thats not the purpose of this thread.

its not about "was the twin towers a good bit of art" its "can 11 / 9 be defined and analyzed under conventional artistic criteria"

besides a collection of photographs cannot be art without intent beyond the person just likeing photographs of a certain subject.

He should not have to apologise,people have a right to say what they want.Even if people may find it offensive.

Art is all perspective,as stated above.

I agree, and its also massively out of context. Mr Hirst's art concerns how we look at things, its the principal of a lot of his work, it makes sense for him consider 11 / 9 from an artistic perspective.

The problem with nuking London artistically is that it would be hard to capture the image unless the terrorist themselves took the picture with prior knowledge that it would happen.
It was the US media that made 9/11 images iconic.
The pictures of the London Blitz could also be described as iconic.

Maybe one would like to describe the bullet holes in the ditches around Dachau works of art as well, or the bombed out streets of London from buzz bombs works of art. Maybe the bomb craters big enough to hide 5 ton trucks in the German countryside from allied bombers could be considered portraits on landscape as well.
The thoughts of some warped and souless people are truly unnerving.