Unholy alliance | 4 November 2009

Damien Hirst: the Blue Paintings
The Wallace Collection, until 24 January 2010

John Walker: Incoming Tide
Offer Waterman & Co, 11 Langton Street, SW10, until 14 November

Weeks ago, when the review schedules were first plotted, I had thought to include here a feature on Damien Hirst. Although I find his work unremittingly thin, I thought I would give it another chance. After all, he is showing new paintings he’s made himself rather than instructed a studio to produce. But the results are so feeble and insignificant that detailed execration (however enjoyable) is more than they’re worth. Hirst’s product thrives on publicity, and his new show has generated so many hundreds of column inches that he must deem it another successful ploy, however vituperative the critical response. The real loser is the Wallace Collection, demeaned by Hirst’s strategic incursion. At least the visitor may rinse the eyes with some of the Wallace’s masterpieces after the vacuous tawdriness of the Hirst room, but in both senses it’s a poor show.

What makes this unholy alliance between art and mammon all the more distressing is the amount of really good painting around at the moment. John Walker (born Birmingham 1939) is one of those artists who have slipped off the critical radar in recent years, simply because we haven’t been shown his work in this country. His reputation, as both painter and teacher, stood very high here in the 1970s and 80s, although at that time his star was also rising fast in America and Australia. Since 1992 he has lived and taught in Boston, with a bolt-hole in Maine. In 2006 he began his ‘Seal Point’ series based on the landscape of the Maine coast, which he has painted fruitfully in both large and small formats.