But Is It Art?

Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Damien Hirst's first major retrospective has opened at the Tate this week. I don't know about you, but I'm one of those philistines who holds this odd belief that art should involve a mixture of creativity and skill. The presentation of actual animals in tanks of formaldehyde doesn't qualify as art for me: biological specimens, suitable for exhibition in the Natural History museums, perhaps, but not works of art. Of course, the rich and creatively gullible can so easily be conned into believing anything an artist produces is necessarily a work of art. Emperor's New Clothes, anyone?

The most irritating aspect of all this is that the man is a good artist, as evidenced by some of his other pieces.