Somebody Agrees that Hirst is a joke ... Phew!

The full entry by Jonthan Jones can be read here.

I went to the exhibition with Arnaud and it made me sick. Well at least this time Arnaud didn't find me in the Koons' pornographic room (see video at 1.58 for vivid details), as it happened at Tate. Sigh.

"Hirst's exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London has sputtered on pointlessly into the bitter first month of this year, which is how I accidentally came into proximity with his paintings again. If I'd known the exhibition was still on, I probably would have avoided the museum entirely. As it was, I studied the Titian I had come to see, then left. I studiously avoided Hirst's free-entry show. Why? I didn't want to ugly the hour.

Bad art is ugly art, in the end. Whatever language we might prefer to use, it all comes down to beauty and ugliness. Hirst's ideas seemed to me once to possess an intellectual and emotional beauty – and their own physical beauty, too. Now everything he does is ugly, ugly, ugly, and it adds to the world's already copious stores of junk. His paintings betray a stupidity and arrogance that makes me lose all interest in him. I love painting and I hate to see it abused.

But ... I could probably kid myself otherwise, given time and a change of direction. That's why I have decided to shun Hirst. He's wasted so much of my time over the years. I freely admit that my determination to believe in him distorted my judgement. I won't get fooled again."