Letter from the New York Art World:
Damien Hirst at the Gagosian Gallery

By Bill Rabinovitch

Here is my Hirst report of September 23, 2000.

No doubt you were all there, as I see by the Mary Barone photos on Artnet.com, but for your further info, here are my later notes that I did concerning my two plus hours of DV video coverage at Saturday's Damien Hirst opening at Gagosian in Chelsea.

It was in the middle of the opening when I had to fight it out with Damien Hirst's official film crew during this huge MEGA OPENING. The work and the installation must have cost many millions of dollars and the opening had been obviously hyped to the skies for weeks by what must have been a massive PR effort.

Larry had opened up a pretty big chunk of his 28,0000 foot space for Damien's use and it was chock a block filled with huge cabinets of Dr. Calagari stuff, and more monumental things, etc..

Usually I am the only one to video most of Larry's actual openings, but this was different.

It's apparently a new age and for the first time ever there must have been 50 people with video cameras present in the crush. I guess Damien's crew or the gallery never imagined such a thing could happen and so were taken aback. One can see that the camcorder revolution had defintely reached critical mass in America.

It was all really overwhelming. Several thousand people showed up at the door at the crack of six, and when the doors opened a few minures after, poured in thru the doors with rermarkable gusto, I was right in front, and as soon as I got in, I moved to the side near Larry and just trained my camera on the ingressing crowd, some ten or so abreast which no one else thought to do. It was right out of a Broadway musical.

Believe me, this was a better visual material than Star Wars. The expressions and the anticipation on the faces were truly epic in their own right. This was humanity for the Millennium, and with no ticket taking or invitation cards to present, to slow them down, as would usually happen at a museum or concert it was truly an amazing sight.

This was by far the most intense opening art crush ever in NYC, although I admit the middle of the opening nights at the Whitney Biennial that I alone get to video, can also be pretty intense in the galleries. But inside It was way beyond even this, with thruway rush hour traffic, going every which way, thru the rather small doorways to the various Hirst rooms intersections which allowed one to go in two or three different ways.

Damien's crew clearly saw me as stiff competition for this extraordinary opening coverage, that they surely did't want others to get and especially me, as they could see I knew what I was up to. I interacted with many people and am after all well practiced in art world coverage, for some ten years, so I had a bit of a leg up on his crew as I know many of the NYC cast of characters and they simply didn't. Plus the beautiful women always like me to talk with them or perhaps vice versa especially when I do freeze frames which I can show them instantly and it works out great. Yes, it's a lot of fun.

So, not to digress, I had to face down Damien's entire video crew, while recording it all, while their rather shrieky arabic woman facilitator, a demon from HELL tried to cow me. Her tactics worked fine with most of the others camcorder holders who stopped, with the notable exception of the BBC crew and myself who continued non plused. They finally gave up - probably realizing that they would get the benefit of having me record them what with the possibility of my New York City "ARTseen" public access cable show going national.

At any rate I successsfully proceeded for a few hours to interview and dialogue with people like British art historian/critic David Silvester, father of the sexy painter starlet Cecily Brown who I've covered closely in the past. David has a few small pieces of my art. I had previously interviewed him at the MOMA press opening for Jackson Pollock a few years ago, and a few points he had mentioned to me needed clearing up about how he first met with the abstract expresionists, which he graciously did. Also he and Richard Serra were great together. I finally angered him by my over attentiveness, but I needed an authentic angry look for my almost completed new Jackson Pollock movie now in progress for two years. Any sacrifice for art !

Another great highlight was my interview with famous "Piss Christ" artist Andres Serrano when we agreed about how Damien has now lightened up on death, on at least it's more gruesome aspects during which we were being filmed by the BBC and others. I felt Damien missed a good opportunity by not having included at least one sliced up real something, as he definitely had the room. It would have given this somewhat sanitized, but amazing technological show on death an added punch.

I also did a nice little interview thing with the quite up, internationally famous writer Salman Rushdie and his new beautiful girlfriend-model who were pleased for my coverage.

My own feelings about the various art work were mixed, but seeing a show of this size in the very first unfiltered moments is always a rush and that is afterall the stuff I am videoing at that exact moment of first sight. Recalling my jet pilot days, I think about those war movies where the pilot is trying to get an often weaving moving target in his sights to get a lock on. It definitely takes some skill. I think that my videos convey something of my approach, my visual adventure into the unknown, the first moment of discovery of the art, and the moving in and around it that takes place during the process. Not the afterbirth of lifeless/ static images.

Most people were sort of awed by the spectacle, including myself, but there were of course some artists, dealers and critics who were upset with or hated the show for various reasons and were very vocal with me about it. Charlie Finch was as usual wonderfully outrageous.

For an undivulged reason, Charlie Finch had purposefully smashed his Damien Hirst orange wrapped ping pong ball limited edition commemorative invitation to bits earier in the day, even knowing he could probably sell in for $1,100 on EBay. My advice to him was don't sweat it, for it's the now same as the famous Rauschenberg erased DeKooning drawing. Well, maybe not, but who knows, in today's crazed art world ?

I myself liked best Damien's huge green turquoise fish tank called "Lost Love", with a multitude of fairly large fish seemingly as interested in the spectators as they with them.

Many, many hundreds were left standing outside, sadly never to get in at all. According to Artnet, Damien never showed up to mingle. Perhaps it's true. I never caught a glimpse, although someone said to me they saw him leave and speed off in a fast car with friends. Regarding that, I had however caught him with Julian Schnabel for Damien's previous huge Gagosian opening in SoHo back in 1997. While interviewing them, I had given Julian my video camera for a moment, wondering just what he would do; and as he fixed it on Damien's gleeful and impish wink, the paparazzi flew into a frenzy, screaming "Me, Julian, Film Me! " Ahh, memories !

The current after opening party was nearby on Tenth Avenue, and so, much later at night I stood outside with Steven Vincent of "Art and Auction" magazine and his most incredibly beautiful lady friend for a few minutes as we tried out all our every wiles to gain access with no success at all.

PS: Just received an Email from the Saatchi Gallery in London. They loved my yesterday written piece and said it was the most entertaining of anything they had seen about the opening.

Bill Rabinovitch lives in New York City and can be reached at [email protected]. Bill is developing a series of DVD's about the NYC art world. His art can be found on eyeonart.com. He was recently interviewed by thewireonline.com (search on last name only).