No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is more famous for pickling sharks in formaldehyde than for his painting. He once famously claimed that he only actually painted five of his notorious spot paintings himself, the rest of the work being completed by assistants. Hardly reassuring.

What then are we to make of his new collection at that bastion of high art The Wallace Collection? How will the enfant terrible of modern art fair amongst the stuffy old masters and furniture of this intimate venue and most importantly, can the man actually paint?

The short answer is yes. But just. The problem is that the work on display here lacks any real virtuosity. There’s a real lack of variation in the use of colour and scene and little obvious sequence or narrative. If the size of these paintings evokes Francis Bacon then this is where the similarity ends ; they certainly don’t have the same violent brushwork or awe inspiring assertiveness.  On the flip side, neither do they offer any delicacy or polish.

Hirst plumps for his old, familiar theme – the darkness at the core of man. The majority of the 25 paintings feature a luminous skull on a black background. Daubed around this are cold, white grid lines all leading back to the death heads which gawp at you with the same, blank, forbidding expression. Visitors will instantly be reminded of his £50 million diamond encrusted human skull.

Is this simply a rehashing of his fixation with death transferred to canvas then?  Ultimately, yes. Even the same motifs we see in his sculpture are trundled out again – the cigarettes, the drink, the flayed bodies.  How many more times do we need to be reminded that smoking kills? Doubtless visitors will also be happy to hear that the fascination with killer fish is aired again, this time in the image of a shark’s jaw. Reminding people that they die has been a theme in art for centuries and will always be relevant. The issue seems to be that Hirst is stuck in the same groove and isn’t finding new ways of articulating the ideas.

Hirst paid £250000 to refurbish the upper galleries of The Wallace for this show. Last night one of his other paintings sold for £100000 at Christies. The figures surrounding him are staggering. We have to ask what people are really paying for – the work or a slice of the notoriety?

So much has been made of showing this work alongside the more classical pieces in the collection and the dialogue that this may or may not lead to. If these paintings were shown outside the confines of The Wallace it really is debatable how well they would stand on their own. Take Hirst’s fame out of the equation and you’re on very shaky ground. To get even further down to basics and look at it another way, what would the verdict be if an art student had created these paintings instead and hung them in a basement in Shoreditch?

No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst, The Wallace Collection, Hertford House
Manchester Square ,London W1U 3BN until 24 January 2010. Admission, Free