WARHOL MOVING FROM 32 CAMPBELL SOUP CANS TO HIS SOCIETY PORTRAITS?.....

What does it mean that Hirst, who made British contemporary art famous in the 1990s, and who is still a huge popular draw as his show at Tate Modern proved, has turned out to be such an excruciatingly terrible artist?

Everyone except me seems to fall into one of two equally complacent camps on this. First, there are the people who hated Hirst all along, never saw anything there but fraud, and now feel cosily vindicated. But they are wrong: there is nothing clever about being closed off to the new, and Hirst, let's say from 1988 to 1995, was an unexpected, dazzling exponent of new ways to make art, who seemed driven by a real obsession with mortality.

Now, it is all turning to dust and misted formaldehyde.

-Jonathan Jones
 The Guardian
 Oct 11 2012