But Is It Art?

[image error] Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Damien Hirst's first major retrospective has opened atthe Tate this week. I don't know about you, but I'm one of those philistineswho holds this odd belief that art should involve a mixture of creativity andskill. The presentation of actual animals in tanks of formaldehyde doesn'tqualify as art for me: biological specimens, suitable for exhibition in theNatural History museums, perhaps, but not works of art. Of course, the rich andcreatively gullible can so easily be conned into believing anything an artistproduces 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.