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We're still queuing to see Leonardo's Mona Lisa or Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel 500 years after they were painted: will we still be queuing to see Hirst's work in 500 years time? I very much doubt it. Hirst's greatest work is to have convinced rich fools to part with their money. Nowt wrong with that, good luck to him. But don't call it art; that's an insult to the thousands of extremely talented, but ignored, painters and sculptors etc, this country produces every year.

Will people still queue in 500 years to see an Hirst? I can't answer that for sure but why not? Hirst is every bit as renowned in his lifetime as Da Vinci or Michelangelo.
People were unsure about Warhol 40 years ago-some still are! But Warhol's work is now part of any art curriculum. Jackson Pollock! Isn't that just dribbles on canvas?
Whatever your opinion Damien Hirst is a unique part of art history. The man is either genius or madman but wasn't Van Gogh, Warhol, Pollock, etc?

Hirst has truly caught on to a golden, if repetitive, formula and will almost never run out of creatures to submerge in formaldehyde. I wonder which will dry out first, flying pigs and headless chickens, etc., etc., or rich people who believe in money's power to spontaneously generate the emperor's clothing, or taste and art, where none exists. While we the poor look on with less bemusement than could be had if it weren't for the noises made by those poorer than ourselves all over the world begging for funds. By the way, am I the only person with an utter failure to see how dead animals drowned in chemical tanks could possibly elevate one's sense of well-being?

Satisfaction is the predilection of need.

If someone is stupid enough to buy this tat then Hirst is clearly a better businessman than artist. This is not art, it is a phase of trying to be "different" and they will enver come close to the renassaince greats. Their names will be forgotten in decades.

Please don't put these idiots in the same group as the greats of Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Monet etc as it's frankly insulting to their talent and hard work

The old adage about a fool and his/her money was never truer than for the gullible who are prepared to hand over more money than most of us earn in a lifetime for the non-art Hirst produces.

Words fail me. Call me a Palestine (sic) but I really cannot see how this can be deemed as art and certainly not worth the huge sum of money paid out.

I for one am sick of these impostors marauding as artists. Unmade bed, pile of bricks etc.

btw the palenstine was a joke!

He gets too much attention and far too much money. If all the money that was spent on Damian Hirst's (and not just him) work was shared out amongst the many thousands of artists struggling today the country would be infinitely richer culturally.

"the emperor's new clothes writ large and obscene"

Exactly. Hirst is a ------ but an excellent businessman.

If an artist makes money it cannot be art. If the work is not a pretty portrait painting or Romanesque scultpure it cannot be art. If it wasn't taught at a history of art class it can't be art. If an artist gets attention.. money... fame... imagine that? Art being popular - God forbid!

Lot of people here need to wise up and realise that art evolves and that it can be moer than a portrait or a Romanesque bust.

people are quick to tell you about their favourite artist and so often in the case of hirst, emin et al, about their least favourite. they can, it would seem, talk endlessly and with boundless enthusiasm about the life, character, personality and foibles of the individual that so draws or repels them.

ask them about their favourite piece of art (or what it is they don't like about a particular work) and the responses are very different. for most people who do not make art, it would seem much easier to talk about the person who makes it, rather than the work itself.

people have dismissed hirst's work en masse. very many without seeing the work outside a grainy photograph reprinted in a tabloid paper. if you do not like this work or that, fine. if you have seen nothing in his exhibitions that you find worthwhile, also fine. but why does this then extend to attacking all work (and in some cases all future work) made by the artist.

for an artist, whether you love or despise their work matters little. or rather the experience for them is identical. the only art that fails is that which fails to make an impression, to cause a reaction. if hirst's work really was without merit, would it cause people to write blog entries to attack it, while others still, write in it’s defence?

the truth is that we see dreadful, pointless, low intensity art every day. we just don't notice it. we can ignore it.