Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Blog 6- Lury

‘Contemplating a Self-portrait as a Pharmacist: A Trademark Style of Doing Art and Science.” Celia Lury, Theory, Culture & Society 2005 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol.22 (1):93-110. Downloaded from http://tcs.sagepub.com at University of Auckland Library on April 13, 2008.

Who is Celia Lury?

Celia Lury is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College. Her main interests are sociology of culture and feminist theory. She writes about visual culture and the commodity character of contemporary culture, also about the importance of time, memory and duration to perceptions of the object.[1]

Selling a Spectacle

Lury’s essay uses Damien Hirst as an example of an artist who crosses the boundaries of authorship by harnessing the media and using a brand name. He negates the need for any originality of artist hand in his work for the purposes of communicating an idea. Lury likens Hirst’s work to staging the experience of flow which is characterised by speed, variability and miscellaneity- the way media has become.[2]

This staging of the experience of flow illustrates what Lury perceives to be Hirst's branding: Immediacy.[3] Hirst uses the themes of life and death, and creates what Lury likens to scientific experiments or events in order to create market value.

Elizabeth Curid talks in “The Economics of a good party” about value emerging from a social system; a ‘scene’. It affirms the value of the buzz created in places like gallery openings in the creation of a market.[4] It is this value, the “buzz” value that Hirst thrives on.

Currid mentions Herbert Blumer’s idea that fashion is created by the general public and transferred to the elite.[5] Hirst is able to direct his work almost as mass-produced “kitsch” and distribute it at a lesser price to many people who are taken in by the spectacle of consumable life and death, yet Hirst puts high prices on the originals for the elite consumer. Instead of Hirst’s work functioning by heightening the tastes of the less elite, perhaps it lessens the tastes of the elite due to the recognition that they, as the elite, should be included in the “buzz”.

For Sut Jhally, advertising is a religion where the commodity world interacts with the human world at the most fundamental levels, holding within itself the essence of important social relationships.”[6] Perhaps Hirst’s work does critique these facets of the commodity world. I must admit that I am quite drawn in to Hirst’s experiments. He is obviously an excellent business man with some interesting aesthetic ideas. However here lies the only limiting factor of Hirst’s work: that it can highlight human curiosity about the experience of life and death but it, like pharmaceuticals, may only ever offer a hope of immortality. One thing seems for certain: we, as consumers, have become the phenomenon. And Hirst is laughing all the way to the bank.
[1] "Dr Celia Lury." Virtual Society. 20 Apr. 1999. Web. 02 Sept. 2009. .
[2] Celia Lury, “Contemplating a Self-Portrait as a Pharmacist”: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science”, Theory, Culture, Society, Vol.22(1), London: Sage, pp93-110;p7
[3] Ibid;p98
[4] Elizabeth Currid, “The Economics of a Good Party: Social Mechanisms and the Legitimization of Art/Culture”, Journal of Economics and Finance, vol.31, no.2, Fall 2007, pp386-394;390
[5] Ibid;p387
[6] Sut Jhally, quoted in McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity. London: Yale UP, 1995;p7

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