Lury - "'Contemplating a Self-portrait as a Pharmacist': A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science"

Lury, C. “‘Contemplating a Self-portrait as a Pharmacist’: A Trade Mark Style of Doing Art and Science” Theory, Culture, Society. Vol.22(1), London: Sage, pp.93-110

Celia Lury’s interest lies in the sociology of culture; in this particular essay she looks at yBa artist Damien Hirst’s self-branding in relation to what she identifies as a shift from brand names being a mark of ownership of particular products to them becoming a mark of “the organisation of a set of relations between products in time” (Lury, 94). In this text the notion of Hirst as a brand is placed within the latter concept of branding. Lury (97) suggests that the brand name “Hirst” fills the gaps between individual works or series. This idea comes out of Raymond Williams understanding of flow, in which through a discussion of television he comes to suggest that the interval no longer divides discrete programs, but is used to make a sequence into a flow – it is filled with “an advertisement, a trailer, or a broadcasting company ‘indent’” (Lury, 97).

This notion of flow is the topic of a Cat and Girl comic, ‘Hot and Cool’[1]. Grrrl berates boy for watching television with the line “Television is an endless multi-headed spew of audio and video. At least movies end” after asking “Could any medium be more passive?”. I think I agree with Grrrl, there is something a little suspect about a ceaseless hauling to the fore of images and sound with no break or puncture. The comic made me think about Lacan’s clinical practice of varying length sessions which used the end of the session to puncture routine, thus calling into question all that had gone before (Dean, 36). Instead of the session becoming incorporated into the regular flow of habit and routine, the “see you next time, pay at the door” model, or, in relation to television, the “tune in tomorrow for more” model, the end of the session challenges this stability. Tim Dean (36) suggests that such a challenge to stability serves to “introduce some space into re-existent organisations of meaning”.

This made me think about what I perceive as Hirst’s creation of a risk-free practice. I believe that through his self-branding Hirst has created a situation where he cannot puncture his own discourse. Each work or series does not allow for the opening up of space, but is a continuation – with the Hirst stamp of approval. This makes me question Lury’s (98) swift move to characterise the Hirst brand as “living-ness”. Hirst suggests that the spot paintings are “full of life” only as long as they carry the possibility of the series continuation (quoted in Lury, 96). My interest in Hirst (if any) lies in his perverse partnering of religion with capitalist culture in order to draw attention to the belief that a successful life is one in which the company/soul/community continues. But I believe that “living-ness” is also made up of pauses, ends and punctures and should not be so readily defined by a notion of success that does not account for the space these moments provide.

Works Cited:

Dean, T. “Art as Symptom: Zizek and the ethics of psychoanalytic criticism.” Diacritics 32.2 (2004): 21-41.

Gambrell, D. “Hot and Cool”, http://www.catandgirl.com, retrieved 24/9/08

[1] http://catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=594