«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

So what does Hirst do? He goes on today's Blue Peter and mocks the educational values of 70s Britain and the traditional BBC that he and I both benefited from. He tells kids that at first he assumed the spin machine was just fun, "whereas art is something more serious. And then as I got older, I started thinking about Van Gogh and all those painters, and cutting your ear off when you're painting, and at that point I just thought: 'Why does it have to be like that?' I thought: 'No, actually, the better art is the art made with the spin machine.'"

So, wait – poor Vincent, who spent his lonely life learning to draw, who finally encountered the impressionists in Paris and broke through to an intense visionary style of his own, who painted some of the most moving and enduring art of all time – Van Gogh was just some loser?

Don't be a loser like Van Gogh, kids. Be a winner like Uncle Damien. Forget talent, forget work, forget the imagination and creative energy that burned in Vincent van Gogh. Art is just a laugh and a con. So is everything else.

The tragedy is that Hirst was once a serious artist consumed by the terror of death. Now what is he doing? Well, raking it in. But it's gross and horrible for him to inflict his stale, jaded, cynical views on children.

Hirst once promised so much. Now he is a national disgrace, a living example that talent is nothing and money is king. How pathetic for him to go on the programme he says inspired him and use it as a platform to corrupt the young.

-Jonathan Jones

-The Guardian