Damien Hirst: "numbingly awful"

Con man Damien Hirst and one of his spot paintings

From Jed Perl's essay in the August 2 New Republic:

This past winter Larry Gagosian mounted simultaneous exhibitions at his eleven eponymous world-wide galleries of Damien Hirst’s “spot paintings,” which may well have the distinction of being the most numbingly awful abstract compositions ever presented to the public. Each painting—they come in widely varying sizes and are done by Hirst’s studio assistants—consists of rows of same-sized but differently colored spots on a neutral ground. Does anybody really believe that the spot paintings are any good? I wouldn’t even compare them to wallpaper: it would be unfair to wallpaper. And yet the spot paintings constitute a phenomenon that certain collectors feel a need to embrace.