EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH ON JEFF KOONS AND DAMIEN HIRST

Great pop artist Peter Blake once said that while he thinks Jeff Koons is all about money, it's a different story for Damien Hirst. I asked art historian Edward Luci-Smith his opinion on the subject: «No, I don't think Damien is all about money. He has made two recent efforts to turn himself into a painter, making his own stuff in the studio, in a traditional way. One at the Wallace Collection in London (he bought his way in). And one more recently at White Cube in Bermondsey. Both shows were execrated by the critics. In fact I think the one at White Cube, which I saw very recently, is quite interesting.

Damien, thanks to his own entrepreneurial cleverness and chutzpah is trapped in a difficult situation. What the Tate Modern exhibition demonstrated (there were no paintings) is that he is actually very short of ideas, and that those ideas, very often, were not his own. But there have been lots of visitors, because it is all supposedly controversial.

In many ways, though the objects on display are very different, this Damien is like the late Thomas Kinkade. And I think that, just as Kinkade's career unravelled, Damien's may do so too.

Koons, I think, has no ambitions to paint. He is purely 'art as business'. He knows what art is - he collects: paintings by Courbet, a statue by Tilman Riemenschneider. But if you buy his own products, more fool you.»