h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had never even noticed the picture of DH and the Dead Head at the top of the page until this posting (shows the power of advertising!!) and now everytime I look at it I feel sick - can anyone get it removed?

I dont think its that disgusting, but then im a teenage male. I just wanna know, where the hell did he get the head from??

Luckt me, it's not on my front page. I had to go looking at the artwork to see it. I get a running advert for 180 lbs sterling to buy Opium, one of his dotty doodles. Ho hum not so noxcious, just who is this nobody? dot dot, dot dot dot... who cares but you can believe I won't be searching his site to look at his goulish dead head again!

Perhaps you'd like to donate yours for his next photo shoot since it doesn't offend you, my dulled to violence, invencible teenage oaf! Or maybe you would like to volonteer to turn the tables on him, you could take a picture and it could be his dead head on the table? I bet this might offend him.

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The photo was taken on an art studies trip to a mortuary when Damo was still a student. Damien is the one on the left. This means that the photo was probably taken by another student - and photographs belong to the photographer rather than the subject thus this is not an artwork by Damien Hurst but by some unnamed artist. By selling it as his own he is infringing on the intellectual copyright of the real "artist".

All I can say is Damien Hirst - Yuck! What a complete w-nker. A waste of time, space and money. I don't particularly care for his work (even less so when I realised what a one-trick pony he is) but it is Hirst the individual I have grown to abhor.

Then again, that's precisely what he was aiming for; to the attention or publicity seeker any reaction is better than anonymity (which is probably where he belongs). Bill Drummond does publicity stunts with so much more style, and none of it in the extremely dubious taste of Hirst's stuff...

I could not agree more!
I just cannot for the life of me think of anything more obnoxious than that pic..........on H2G2 too!!!!!!!!!

'G'

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The film 'A Bridge Too Far' *is* about war (I believe I mentioned that it's a war film). It takes place towards the end of the Second World War, when the Allies were gradually invading Europe. It tells the story of the Allies attempt to take all the bridges over the Rhine (I think). It's called 'A Bridge Too Far' because things came apart when they tried to secure the bridge at Arnhem.

As for who's in it, I can't come up with a definitive cast list, but you should find the film on IMDB. As I recall it's an AWA production (Anybody Who's Anybody). I know Sean Connery and Gene Hackman were in it, plus a lot of other famous people, but it's a while since I saw it, so I can't remember who!

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I'm not disputing that it is art - it may even be good art, but what it isn't is appropriate advertising material.
Exactly the same as the Bennetton ad with the shrit taken off the dead soldier - art yes, but not fit to be forced on everyone against their will. In that case it was a print advert and the ASA stepped in and agreed with the complainants - but do they ahve a mandate here?
(Probably not...I'd like to think that the PTB would have a quiet word...probably our best chance really..if not I may look at customising my browser to not link to ad.uk.doubleclick.net but thats a lot of effort )

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I remember a program on ITV over here in Britain some years ago. It was one of those Saturday evening things along the lines of 'Game for a Laugh' or 'Beadle's About'. They took a few people of the streets with no artistic training at all, and turned them loose in an artist's studio with some canvas, paints, paint brushes and various other things, and just let them get on with it. When the 'artists' had finished, a group of genuine art critics was brought in to look at the work of these 'discoveries'. I have never heard so much drivel being spouted in my life. The embarassment on the faces of the critics when they were told it was all a big con was a joy to behold!

Since that day, I have never taken a critic's opinion of *anything* seriously! Art *is* personal. If you like a particular work and can afford it, buy it. If you can't afford the original, try to get a print or a copy. If somebody tells you it's not art, or reacts disparagingly, ignore them. You're the one that has to live with it, so if you like it that's all that matters.

Whether it's art or not, flashing a photogarph of a young man (any young man), posing with the rather revolting lifeless head of some poor bloke who is way beyond being able to object in person [pause for breath], is tasteless in the extreme. Nothing short of an enormous bribe will ever convince me that displaying this photograph has absolutely anything to do with its dubious artistic merits On the contrary: it has everything to do with shocking us into taking notice of the advertisement. Which is a grown advertising executives version of eating boogers at the dinner table... a rather nasty way of getting attention that warrants a good swat.

JTG

If I may butt in?...

I was contemplating buying a print or two from Eyestorm. I will not now, because of the picture that they've chosen to display in their advert.

However, the same advert has got you all talking about Eyestorm, albiet negatively. The advertisers do not care how you think of them (ie; offended, amused, thought-provoking) just so long as you think of them, period. This is the exact result they intended by putting up that picture.

I even think that it may be a foam rubber head. But i'm not going to investigate too deeply..

It's real.

It's a tricky business, this... when art and advertising and paying for h2g2's upkeep are all involved. I'm inclined to go blustering over there (Eyesore... or whatever it is) and give them a pieceof my mind (a tiny one... I have to conserve); but another slant this issue takes is that these people are spending good money, and thereby keeping the people we've grown fond of in ermine, in the belief that showing us pictures of punks posing with the heads of dead people will attract our business. In that light, might it not be a bit rude of us to disavow them of that notion if it leads to a loss of advertising revenue? So, in a sense, having a little rant about Eyesore's awful art, but accepting it anyway, is a quirky way of saying 'I love you' to the folks wot bring us the Guide.

JTG

I don't have a problem with Damien Hirst, in that I think there are more objectionable and less talented artists around. I just find the picture itself rather disgusting, and wish I didn't have to see it so often.

Fortunately, I have a floating toolbar that I can leave in that corner of the screen and set to "always on top".