Damien Hirst: Two weeks one summer, White Cube - review

Standing in front of Three Parrots With Guitar and Jug (2010-12), one of more than 40 new paintings by Damien Hirst, I felt an emotion I never expected this once-brilliant artist to provoke: pity. Hirst’s first oils on canvas, shown at the Wallace Collection in 2009, were dire but, staggeringly, he has got far worse in the past three years. Showing the paintings in this abundance, one cringeworthy and wretched canvas after another, is like prolonging the suffering of a dying animal.

The guitar painting teems with the still life imagery which crops up throughout the show — jugs, fruit, stuffed parrots, butterflies and white spots against a moody blue background — elsewhere there are embryos, blossom, scissors and shark jaws. Hirst seems mystified by paint — it is utterly inert whether he fudges liquid glazes or bungles expressionist impasto.

He gives a masterclass in inept drawing, unable to give anything a sense of its form, weight or depth, and the lines criss-crossing the painting, inspired by Francis Bacon’s “space frames”, only serve to weave a messy web over the chaos beneath. Yet, in the show’s catalogue, a curator from Madrid’s Prado museum, whose day job is looking after works such as Goya’s great Black Paintings, dares to mention Hirst’s flaccid daubs in the same breath as Velázquez and Manet.

White Cube has many good painters on its roster but if they made work this poor, I can’t believe it would be allowed out of the studio. Hirst’s fame means no one stands in his way, and this show is an utter embarrassment for him and the gallery. Someone needs to put Hirst the painter out of his misery.

Until July 8 (020 7930 5373, whitecube.com)