Blakespotting—Damien Hirst

In his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, Blake writes of having been taken in vision to see the "stupendous originals" that lie behind later art

Those wonderful originals seen in my visions, some of them one hundred feet in height; some painted as pictures, and some carved as basso relievos, and some as groupes of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning, where more is meant than meets the eye. (5)

William Blake.—The Ghost of a Flea.—circa 1819-20.—Tempera heightened with gold on

mahogany.—214 x 162 mm.—Tate.—Bequeathed by W. Graham Robertson 1949.

In an interview, Damien Hirst discusses the early influence on him of Blake and in particular, The Ghost of a Flea:



Michael Bracewell

One of the works you saw at Tate that made a particular impact was William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea c.1819–20, which is an amazing thing. What is it about this image that appeals to you?

Damien Hirst

I think firstly it’s the scale. I always wanted to do big things when I was younger. I thought big is good. But when I saw the Rembrandt etchings, I remember having a conversation with Marcus [art school friend] about them and him saying: ‘Well, you know, you’ve got to look at it more, because scale is different from size. This has got enormous scale, but it’s very, very small.’ I couldn’t work that out. So when I came across the Blake painting, I thought: ‘What is it? It takes you in there. It’s dark, and it’s scary, and it has this huge scale.’ Then you think: ‘Where is the flea? What is the flea? Why is it the ghost of a flea?’ It was probably the most frightening image I’d ever seen. It seduces you; it asks so many questions, but doesn’t answer them. I really enjoyed thinking about it and looking at it. I went back and saw it a few times. Later, I looked at all Blake’s work, but it didn’t have the same power as that image. It has that David Lynch feel to it, hasn’t it?

Now, in an exhibition in Venice, Hirst has turned the Ghost into a three-dimensional figure 60 feet tall. Hirst’s exhibition, with the title Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, includes around 200 works, many of them monstrous in scale, filling both the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana.

Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable follows a fiction that Hirst is simply the millionaire benefactor who came to the aid of archaeologists who had found a hoard of sunken treasure back in 2008. Here's a summary account from the Exhibition Guide.

In 2008, a vast wreckage site was discovered off the coast of East Africa. The finding lent credence to the legend of Cif Amotan II, a freed slave from Antioch (north-west Turkey) who lived between the mid-first and early-second centuries CE.  Ex-slaves were afforded ample opportunities for socio-economic advancement in the Roman Empire through involvement in the financial affairs of their patrons and past masters. The story of Amotan (who is sometimes referred to as Aulus Calidius Amotan) relates that the slave accumulated an immense fortune on the acquisition of his freedom. Bloated with excess wealth, he proceeded to build a lavish collection of artefacts deriving from the lengths and breadths of the ancient world. The freedman’s one hundred fabled treasures – commissions, copies, fakes, purchases and plunder – were brought together on board a colossal ship, the Apistos (translates from Koine Greek as the ‘Unbelievable’), which was destined for a temple purpose-built by the collector. Yet the vessel foundered, consigning its hoard to the realm of myth and spawning myriad permutations of this story of ambition and avarice, splendour and hubris. The collection lay submerged in the Indian Ocean for some two thousand years before the site was discovered in 2008, near the ancient trading ports of Azania (south-east African coast). Almost a decade after excavations began, this exhibition brings together the works recovered in this extraordinary find. A number of the sculptures are exhibited prior to undergoing restoration, heavily encrusted in corals and other marine life, at times rendering their forms virtually unrecognisable. A series of contemporary museum copies of the recovered artefacts are also on display, which imagine the works in their original, undamaged forms.

Note that Cif Amotan II is an anagram of “I am a Fiction”, as is admitted by Hirst. The best anagram I can come up with for Aulus Calidius Amotan is “usual custodial mania”. Probably not the right answer, assuming there indeed is a hidden anagram, but it kind of fits. Perhaps someone else will have a go.

In the Punto della Dogana, and here I follow the accounts of newspaper art critics (easily Googled, though Waldemar Januszczak lurks behind a paywall), the story is supported by collections in glazed cabinets as well as film and photographs of the works being discovered and recovered underwater. There are classical Roman statues, Greek Medusa heads and Egyptian goddesses. We move from China to South America to India, from malachite to marble and  jade to lapis lazuli. Each work is shown in its “original” state, covered in coral, limpet shells, and other sea-growths, then as restored for display, and finally as a tidy museum reproduction.

Palazzo Grassi holds what must be the most impressive piece in the show: Blake’s Ghost of a Flea realised as a massive 18-metre high headless striding figure that fills the interior courtyard or atrium. The statue is accompanied by a much smaller version supposedly retrieved from the wreck. And the Head of a Demon, of a scale to match the giant figure. Not one critic I’ve read recognised The Ghost of a Flea but had to have it pointed out to them by Hirst. The puzzle for me is to what extent can the giant Ghost of a Flea be considered an attempt to recreate one of Blake’s “wonderful originals seen in my visions, some of them one hundred feet in height” or indeed does the whole show consist of “stupendous originals”?

Here are the accounts from the Exhibition Guide of the works displayed in the Atrium of the Palazzo Grassi. The fiction is faithfully maintained.

A Demon with Bowl (Exhibition Enlargement) Painted resin 1822 × 789 × 1144 cm
Standing at just over eighteen metres, this monumental figure is a copy of a smaller bronze recovered from the wreckage. The discovery of the statue appeared to solve the mystery of a disembodied bronze head with saurian features excavated in the Tigris Valley in 1932. Characterised by monstrous gaping jaws and bulbous eyes, the head was initially identified as Pazuzu, the Babylonian ‘king of the wind demons’. The unearthing of this figure has since called this identification into question, due to the absence of Pazuzu’s customary attributes of wings, scorpion tail and snakeheaded penis.
Ancient Mesopotamian demons were complex primeval creatures that exhibited elements of the human, animal and divine. Embodying a transgressive response to rigid social structures, these hybrid beings could be variously apotropaic, benign and malevolent. One theory posits that the bowl held in the demon’s outstretched arm was a vessel used for collecting human blood, conforming to the contemporary perception that demons were universally destructive beings. It seems more likely that the figure served as a guardian to the home of an elite person.

B Head of a Demon, Excavated 1932 (Exhibition Enlargement)  Bronze 194.5 × 230 × 268 cm

C Submerged Demon with Bowl Powder-coated aluminium, printed polyester and acrylic lightbox 183.2 × 122.3 × 10 cm

All the above derives from printed and internet sources. Is there anyone going to Venice this year who can provide a "live" account? Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable is at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, Venice, from 9th April until 3rd December 2017. For more information visit palazzograssi.it .

Sources

William Blake.—A descriptive catalogue of pictures, poetical and historical inventions, painted by William Blake, in water colours, being the ancient method of fresco painting restored, and drawings, for public inspection and for sale by private contract.—London : Printed by D.N. Shury for J. Blake 1809.
[Facsimile].—Reprint with new introduction by Jonathan Wordsworth.—Oxford : Woodstock Books, 1990.—Revolution and romanticism, 1789-1834.
[Facsimile].—New ed..—Poole : Woodstock,2001.—Revolution and romanticism, 1789-1834.
[Facsimile, with added introduction, notes and illustrations] Seen in my visions : a descriptive catalogue of pictures : edited by Martin Myrone.—London : Tate Publishing, 2009

Damien HIrst.—“Damien Hirst at Tate Modern : the Artist in conversation [with] Michael Bracewell, 1 May 2012”, Tate Etc, issue 25 (Summer 2012).
Available online at http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/damien-hirst-tate-modern

Damien Hirst.—Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable [Exhibition Guide].—Venice : Palazzo Grassi; Punta della Dogana, 2017.
This guide can be downloaded from the site: www.palazzograssi.it .