«OH, ART IS TOO HARD»

Opposition to Hirst and to the YBAs in general came from three main sources: red-top rags like The Daily Mail, grumpy critics like Brian Sewell, and 'The Stuckists', an artistic movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson.Three main lines of attack have been used against Hirst: firstly that he is simply out to shock; secondly that he doesn't really produce much of the work himself; and thirdly that putting a cow in a gallery is 'just not art'. But the greats of Renaissance art had legions of assistants to help them out: nobody seems to complain about them. And the 'just not art' issue had already been addressed by dada about 80 years previously.Whatever one's view, there's no question that alongside Warhol, Bacon and Picasso, Hirst will be remembered as one of the most significant names in Twentieth Century art.

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