Queen’s composer attacks Hirst

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (pictured), who despite his official title as the Queen's Master of Music, and his age - he is 74 - is considered something of a trendy, has launched a coruscating attack on Damien Hirst, claiming that he is symbolic of an "age of commercial depravity and irresponsibility".
In a speech given on Wednesday to the conference of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, Sir Peter used Hirst’s record-breaking auction at Sotheby's last month - which included The Golden Calf, a bull with gold horns and hoofs in a tank of formaldehyde which went for £10.3 million - as an example of what was wrong with art today.

He said: "I think we can all learn from a recent auction of art as an instantly recognisable iconic commodity, where it has become part of the entertainment industry, crossed with investment banking. The artist had wit to sell a golden calf and other bejewelled trinkets, but all creative artists, in whatever branch of the arts they work, must ponder the implications of so much money scrambling after manufactured artefacts without content, with just a brand tag supposed to guarantee market value."

He added: "The pressures on us to conform to this image of 'success' in our various art worlds are enormous. It reminds me of the Liberace museum in Las Vegas, where the great man's tatty stage costumes are exhibited, each with a fabulous price tag, and we are supposed to be uplifted."

Sir Peter, who is regarded as one of Britain's most important living composers and conductors, traced this tackiness back to the political philosophy of the former Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He said: "Over the last decades, since Thatcher, every commodity, including culture, not only has to be 'approachable' but, above all, have a measurable market, or commercial value, and must be demonstrably accessible to the largest spread of public. Politics has dumbed itself down to almost below the horizon, with the public given no credit for intelligence or intellect, while, ironically, ever fewer people trouble to vote, such is the disillusion and disgust."