On the same theme as the last post on Sunday we have the notorious anatomist Gunther Von Hagens once again atempting to shake a few dollars out of being controversial by recreating 'The Crucifixion (on Easter Sunday no less) out od the plasticised remains of dead people. As one woild expect the program atempts to cover it's prurient expliotation of the morbid and grisly with a smokescreen of intelectual pontificating on the theme of the cross and it's iconic place in our history through the years. For me this alone would have been enough;  there is such a huge array of great art out there that could be put on display without recall to the antics of this cadaverous clown - but of course that would be to slash viewing figures to one tenth of what a few dead bodies can pull in so hey, whats not to like.

Perhaps in the future Von Hagens work will be seen as great art - hell, perhaps it is now - but for me the reliance on the sensational to get the footfall in is always a suspect pointer toward bad art. Take for example Damien Hurst's retrospective that we were given an advance viewing of on Chanel 4 on Monday night. In amongst all the dead animals chopped in half in formalin baths and skulls encrusted with diamonds, we were treated to the picture of Hurst taken at (he said) 16yo with his head next to the severed head of a dead man in an anatomy lab where he was atending a drawing class. Well will someone bring me the teacher/organiser of that little jolly so I can kick his arse for letting a pubescent schoolboy tamper round with the remains of people who once lived and walked as he does. Ok - you don't want to get too hung up on it, but surely a little respect is due even in a dissection lab. Surely the departed occupants deserve better than this. And what bugs me here is that it's not even great art. Why is it in the show at all - in fact why is any of it in the show, why is there a show. This is 'art' with no other purpose than to elicit a shock response - a cheap caricature of art if you like, and it is a testemont to the stupid gillibility of the art world that they have fallen for it. Hurst, who put a lot of his early works up for sale in Sotheby's on one occasion and earned himself over a hundred million pounds in one night is philosophical about the whole thing, "Whatever anybody says they can see in my work I just agree with them" he says. Well I see a pile of talentless crap - agree with that!