SPEAKER_07 0:10

Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. Alright, let's bango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay, uh, and not to not to brag or anything, but I have my PhD in art history, which I put to very good use on this podcast, where I seek to tell you stuff about all kinds of cool things and make art history accessible, and dare I say it, even a little bit fun. Huh. Imagine that. Thank you for joining me for episode 41, which just might be one of my favorite episodes that I've done in a while. I like every episode that I do, but this one, mm-hmm, this one's got something different. And I don't just think that's because I'm currently drinking a habanero margarita mocktail. Stand back, boys, she's getting crazy. Anywho, I don't know how you'll feel about the episode, uh, but I had a ton of fun making it, and I hope that that comes through. It's also long. I record this at the top, so I don't know how long, but it probably is going to be my longest episode ever. But in my defense, I have gotten no fewer than five messages or reviews since my last pod installation urging me to make longer episodes. Yeah, longer. That is to say, you did this to yourselves. Look at your life, look at your choices. The episode is also a sister episode to episode 40, though you don't necessarily have to listen to that one to enjoy this one. They both talk about works by the same artist, but at radically different times in his career. Those of you who did listen to episode 40 all the way to the end, for which I applaud you, you will have heard me say that I originally intended to cover Damien Hearst in two episodes, but that I wasn't sure if I'd actually do it because I was all hearsted out. Ha, jokes on me. At first I tried to do this as a mini sode, which was perhaps one of the more ridiculous delusions that I've had recently, uh, which not to give you too much of a glimpse into my personal life, but that's saying something. That delusion was quickly shattered for two main reasons. One, the topic that I'm covering is massive in scale in more ways than one. Far too much to be fitting in a mini sode. And two, it's one of those topics that scratches the kind of non-gross itch that so many of us have for adventure and discovery and lost things being found. Good old-fashioned escapism, which is exactly what I need right now. Get me out of here. This is the part where I tell you stuff about a truly unbelievable story and the man who made it real. The wreck of the unbelievable and its captain, contemporary artist Damien Hurst. For the fishermen, the day had started just like any other. The men were used to a life of routine. How could they not be? Fishing was practically in their blood. It also was the livelihood of their small coastal village, which for generations had depended on the daily catches of fishermen just like them. And so the men took to the ocean with their trawls, weighted nets that the fishermen would drag along the ocean floor, netting everything from Barracuda to Yellowfin tuna to even the odd shrimp or two. But on this day in April 2008, the men caught something else entirely. At first it wasn't clear what the object was, as the fishing nets hadn't scooped it up, but rather got tangled in it, entrapping the object in a web of blue netting. But the fishermen knew one thing for certain. The object glinted in the sunlight. The men waited until they docked their boat before they attempted to untangle the mysterious object from the net. Their excitement drew the attention of all of those working along the shoreline, who were awaiting the day's catches for sorting. The sand-docked boat was soon surrounded. In the midst of the chaos, no one looked twice at the foreign backpacker who had been drawn to the scene along with all of the others. As any good millennials want to do, the backpacker pulled out a recording device, perhaps a cheap camcorder or even an early video capable cell phone. They filmed the fishermen as they untangled this strange catch, with the crowd growing more and more jubilant as each new inch was revealed. It was a strange sculpture the size of a dinner plate, one appearing to depict a monkey, but not a living one. The animal's body was strangely flattened, emaciated, curling in on itself as if pictured in a state of mummification. But the fishermen didn't care about the artistic merits of the thing. All they cared about was the fact that the statue appeared to be made of pure shining gold. If not for the backpacker's video footage, that may have been that. But the backpacker had, of course, posted the footage to the internet, giving it the very descriptive title, Fisherman Find Statue. That video was seen by a PhD student by the name of Peter Weiss. It took weeks for Peter to find the village, and even longer for him to convince a pair of fishermen to take him to the approximate site where the monkey statue had snagged in their nets. Peter had a very simple rationale for doing so. If there was one thing, might not there be more? The men told Peter that the efforts were useless. Several of them had gone back since, and they hadn't found anything. But Peter was nothing if not persuasive and persistent. For five days, Peter remained on a small boat, while the local dive instructor named Dee Dee spent hours searching the bottom of the ocean, only to resurface after several hours to shake his head. Then, on day five, everything changed. Dee Dee had been diving for just under an hour when he saw it. A headless, limbless sculpture lying on the ocean floor, its coral and barnacle encrusted surface making it one with the surrounding reef. It was that of a woman, one that had been seemingly forgotten at the bottom of the ocean for a very long time. News of this find made its way to archaeologist Andrew Lerna, who immediately recognized the need to investigate further. But archaeological digs are expensive, all the more so when they take place in the open ocean. Andrew needed money, and he needed it fast. Yes, the statue had probably been waiting at the bottom of the ocean for over a thousand years, but word travels fast, and there was the ever-mounting threat that someone else would get to the site first. Andrew needed a patron, one with a taste for gambling and money to spare. He found exactly that in the form of a contemporary artist who, though allegedly past his prime, was very, very rich. Apart from the artist's net worth, Andrew knew barely anything about him, just that he was the shark guy, which is to say contemporary artist Damien Hearst, who agreed to back Andrew's archaeological expedition. Within a year, Andrew had assembled a team of archaeologists and divers who headed out with him into the open waters of the Indian Ocean. They went to the spot where Peter and his hired divers had encountered the barnacle encrusted statue, hoping beyond hope that there was more to find. It did not take divers long to confirm they had the right spot. That much was made clear when they encountered a skull half buried in the white sand beneath the waves. Not the skull of a person, but of something much, much larger. It was the first in a series of absolutely unbelievable finds, one that Andrew would later refer to as much bigger and more baffling than anyone expected. The team had found the remnants of one of the greatest shipwrecks of all time, one that had been forgotten by the history books and banished to the margins of myth. As the archaeologists hoisted works of bronze, marble, and even gold from the ocean floor, they also worked to uncover the story of why these objects were there in the first place. This is what they found. The ship had been called Apistos, meaning the unbelievable in Hellenistic Greek. It was a fitting name for a ship that had been built by a man whose story was unlike any other. Sif Amatan II had been born a slave, only to be freed by his master, who made Amotan his heir. Amoton invested that money in trade, growing his wealth and his reputation in equal measure. But for a man who grew up with nothing to his name, Amatan was not contented with owning just things. He wanted to possess the world. Some accounts state that Amaton was inspired to do so by mere greed. Others talk of a dream, one in which Amaton was visited by a goddess who instructed him to build a temple to the sun, one that Amaton should fill with artworks befitting the gods. Whatever the call to action, greed or goddess, the result was the same. Amaton dedicated the rest of his life to building one of the greatest and most varied collections of artwork that the world had ever known. One that he loaded onto a ship destined for an unknown location, one that the epistos, its crew, and its cargo would never reach. No one knows what happened as the Epistos sailed through the waters of the Indian Ocean, except for the fact that it was nothing good. But all stories have their silver linings, or I suppose in this case, a golden monkey. One that, if not caught in the nets of humble fishermen, may never have brought the story of the epistos to the surface. It is a story befitting the name of the ship at the heart of it all. It is truly unbelievable. There is little more in this world that I like more than a good story. The one that I just told you is one that five years ago sent me scrambling for my phone, my heart beating quick as my thumbs typed out a rhythm on the keyboard. I was midway through a documentary about the incredible discovery of a treasure trove of objects and the story behind it all. I couldn't believe that I had never heard of this. Me, the girl who grew up wanting nothing more than to be swallowed up whole, not by the sea, but by an archaeological mystery befitting Indiana Jones, Laura Croft, minus the hot pants and physical absorption, and Rick and Evie O'Connell. That last one is a reference to 1999's cinematic masterpiece in my favorite movie of all time, The Mummy. You're welcome. There was no way in heck that I had not heard of the discovery of this incredible shipwreck, the one known as the Epistos. Then, as the results flooded my screen, came the utter devastation. The story, its shipwreck, and the works that I had watched a crew of seemingly legitimate maritime archaeologists pull from the deep, was truly unbelievable in every sense of the word. The story was a fiction, much like its alleged anti-hero Sif Amiton II, a man whose name, if the letters are rearranged, you know, Lord Voldemort style, forms the phrase, I am a fiction. The documentary was as fake as the story it told, as fake as the names given to the cast members who perfectly embodied their roles as maritime archaeologists and annoying PhD students. Or should I say, some of the cast members. A few people were exactly who they claimed to be, including the mastermind behind it all, and the alleged patron of this excavation, contemporary artist Damien Hearst. In the last episode, episode 40, I talked about one of the defining works of Hearst's early career, the one entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. That work features a large taxidermied tiger shark submerged in a formaldehyde solution, all within a state-of-the-art tank. It's the work that set Damien Hearst on a trajectory to become one of the most commercially successful artists of our day, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth. Maritime Archaeology Expedition, kinda wealth. But I'll get back to that in a few minutes. For now, I want to usher you into the year 2017, and the city of Venice, Italy, where on April 19th, a truly wild exhibition opened to the public. One entitled The Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. The exhibition featured hundreds of objects split between two exhibition spaces: the Punta della Dogana, a centuries-old building that sits at the very tip of the Grand Canal, and once served as the city's customs house, and the Palazzo Grassi, a Venetian mansion located just down the Grand Canal from the Punta della Dogana. In the historic walls of these buildings was nothing less than a fantasy brought to life, though no one involved in the show would admit as much. If you asked the owner of the buildings, the curator of the exhibition, or the man who paid for the show, all of them would tell you the same unbelievable story of a shipwreck found in 2008 off the coast of Zanzibar, one that held over a hundred exceptional artifacts that had been pulled from the ocean by a team of archaeologists funded by Damien Hearst. After nearly 10 years following the discovery of the shipwreck and its treasures, Hearst had determined that it was only right that the collection be put on display, and the story of the shipwreck and its discovery shared with the public. Throughout the exhibition spaces were photographs and videos documenting the discovery and recovery process of many of the works appearing in the show, not only sharing with visitors the incredible efforts that went into making the exhibition a reality, but also proving the authenticity of the exhibition's claims. I mean, surely, this was all the evidence that was needed to show the truth behind this unbelievable story. After all, what person, in their right mind, would have gone through this much trouble just to fool people? To boot, those willing to shell out close to 100 Euro could bring home a whopper of an exhibition catalog, one that contained essays written by verified professionals in the field about the history of this ship, its patron, and the multi-year expedition to recover the remnants of the wreck from the Indian Ocean. And yet, there were aspects of the exhibition that were bound to give pause to the average visitor. Did some of the portrait busts look familiar to you? Were ancient Greek statues really that realistic? Or, for us history nerds, how in the world did a second century collector in the Mediterranean get a hold of a Mayan calendar stone? There were then artifacts that would give up the ghost to even the most gullible of visitors.

SPEAKER_06 17:28

Hey, dude, I'm scared to ask. Is it just me? Or does that barnacle encrusted bronze sculpture look like a dead ringer for Mickey Mouse? Dude, I'm freaking out. Oh my god, it kind of does. By the way, did you know that Michael Bay based the Transformers and the Transformers movies off of the model of a Mayan god? No, I'm totally serious. I just read about it in the other room.

SPEAKER_07 17:54

Lindsay, why are your imaginary characters whispering at an art exhibition? I'll tell you. The last place I want to be caught asking a dumb question out loud is at a fancy art exhibition. How do I know? Because I've done it many times. And those spaces tend to echo, as does my shame. For those of you who didn't understand the whispers, I don't blame you. You know, I just wanted to insert a little something something to keep you on your toes. The exhibition also featured sculptures that took the form of extremely recognizable pop culture figures, including Mickey Mouse and the Transformers. Those like robot things that become cars. Or whatever. As I already said, this entire exhibition was a complete farce. I mean, the exhibition itself was very real, uh, but the story it wove for visitors was not. It was completely fabricated by Damian Hurst and his collaborators, all of whom invested a lot of time, money, and complete lack of shame into creating this massive multi-layer scheme in the name of art. Or as some might argue, profit. I am going to talk about it all. The show's conception, the creation of the artworks, this fake documentary, the controversies that nearly sank Damian Hurst's career, all of it. So get on board and buckle up, or whatever they do on ships. Because we are about to go on a journey. For the record, I love the concept of this exhibition and everything that went along with it. In fact, I am about to be bold. Real bold, and say that the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition is one of the coolest things that an artist has done in my lifetime. Do I have quibbles? Yes. Is it overdone? Abso freaking Lutley. Does it exude good taste? Probably not. And in the end, after all of this work that people did, is it really all that convincing? No. But, but, I just love the concept behind this show because it appeals and even speaks to a very essential part of me. The part of me that grew up and still does love movies, TV shows, games, books, you name it, anything dealing with the premise of archaeological or historical adventures. The more ridiculous, the better. Speaks to my soul. Now that you have a general idea of what this all is, I want to walk you through the documentary that I've referenced a number of times, because that's how I came to know about all of this, and I do believe it fundamentally shaped my opinion of it. The documentary was first released on Netflix, which is where I found it on a fateful night back in 2018. In the end, it was the title that sealed the deal: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. Treasures? Yes please. Unbelievable? Sounds promising. I promptly poured myself a glass of wine, or rather, another glass of wine, probably, and pressed play. When I tell you that this looks like a straight-up National Geographic discovery channel looking documentary, I mean it. There are talking heads featuring alleged experts. There are drone shots of a big boat in the middle of the ocean. There's footage of underwater divers. There's digital reconstructions of things. It's all there, and it's all very well. Done. Side note the score of this documentary, the soundtrack of it, is an absolute banger. I'm talking Chef's Kiss. Amazing. Okay, this is Lindsay coming to you in post-production. I'm not using my fancy mic, so my my voice sounds a little off. I also might be getting sick. But anyway. The soundtrack is by a composer by the name of Anne Nikitin. Nikitin? Nicotin. However you say that, she is amazing. And I would 1000% tell you to go look her up. And I will be sure that I link her uh webpage on the podcast's website along with all of my other sources. Alright, now that I've said that, back to your regular programming. Pass Lindsay. Take it away. The documentary opens with stunning shots of Venice, Italy at night, with credits playing over the screen, including the names of the production companies behind the documentary, Oxford Films and Science Limited, both of which sound like very legitimate educational companies. There are then close-ups of a team of art handlers moving a monumental bronze sculpture into place along the Grand Canal. It's nighttime though, so it's tough to make out what this thing is. But you can see that it's very, very large. Then the talking heads start. Those shots of seeming professionals speaking directly to camera. The first voice that you hear belongs to none other than Damien Hearst himself. This is what he says.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

With any story, the gaps between things is where you locate your belief. You know, it's unbelievable to start with, but that makes you believe it.

SPEAKER_07 24:21

That was obviously taken from the documentary itself, and I know that there was quite a bit of background noise as he was speaking. But I wanted to use it anyway so that you could get the vibe and hear what that sounded like coming from Damian Hearst himself. I will, however, repeat it for clarity. But I think what makes you believe in things isn't what's there. It's about what's not there. With any story, gaps between things is where you locate your belief. You know, it's unbelievable to start with, but that's what makes you believe it. End quote. Now when I say it, it sounds ridiculous. Like, shouldn't I have figured it out then and there that this story wasn't true? Maybe, but I didn't. Because it sounded convincing, coming from a middle-aged British man. Following this talking head by Damien Hearst, you get the title screen. Then the story starts. The first 10 minutes or so of the documentary follow a team of experts as they head out to the Indian Ocean to undertake a maritime archaeological expedition. At this point, the viewer doesn't really know what's going on, but it's clear that this team found something in the ocean that they want to go explore. This is where the adventure really starts. You watch as the divers enter the water, ready to explore the site for the very first time. In classic documentary fashion, you hear the head diver radio up to the expedition leader, something like, We're at the dive site. I wish you could see this. But before we can find out what this is, the documentary switches gear and transports us back in time and space to an East African fishing village where we meet a PhD student named Peter. I immediately believed that Peter was an actual PhD student because his first talking head says this. Truer words have never been spoken. And as someone at the time who was working on her doctoral thesis and probably hadn't written anything in months, I felt that deep in my soul. Honestly, and I'm not being sarcastic when I say this. It was probably that line that convinced me more than anything else that this was real. Because I related to it so deeply. Oh my god. Grad school's a hoot. You heard a version of what comes next in the opening narrative of the episode. Fisherman found a golden monkey statue, this annoying PhD student, and he is very annoying, makes his way to the beach, hires some divers, and they help him find more stuff in the water. And at some point you find out that they're talking about a shipwreck site. Peter then gets an archaeologist named Andrew Lerna on the blower, and they decide to launch an expedition in the hopes that they find more stuff. And while it states that Andrew Lerna is a professor at the University of Southampton, I think, it doesn't matter because he is completely made up. And someone needs to give this dude an Oscar because he plays the role of a tired, underappreciated, and probably underpaid archaeologist very well. It is ultimately Andrew who contacts contemporary artist Damien Hearst, and Hearst agrees to fund the expedition. Lindsay, how did you not figure it out at this point? Do you really think Damien Hearst is investing in maritime archaeology? I don't know. You know, the guy has a lot of money. If I had hundreds of millions of dollars, heck yeah! I am 1000% investing in archaeological expeditions. It truly did not seem abnormal to me that someone might do this. I mean, millionaires have done weirder stuff. As the documentary progresses, it does start to lay these little breadcrumbs of disbelief that start to get bigger and bigger and bigger as the underwater expedition progresses. I finally twigged that something wasn't quite right when the dive team started pulling things out of the water. And it's not the technical stuff that gave me pause. They had a very professional-looking setup. There's an industrial crane mounted on a large boat, they're in the middle of the ocean. It looks totally legit. Up until that point, though, they've really only shown brief shots of objects. They haven't really given you enough time to look at them and question what you're seeing. For example, apart from the golden monkey that starts the whole documentary off, the first work that you encounter underwater is a female bronze torso that is absolutely covered in coral and other incrustations. When this thing came on screen, I remember thinking, huh, it looks like a dress mannequin. But it's covered in coral, you don't see it for very long, and then someone very official looking comes on screen telling you that it looks like a classical sculpture. And I thought, well, what the hell do I know? And I went with it. The next thing you see is what looks like a super cool elephant skull, which turns out to be carved from marble. It's super cool, it looks incredible in the underwater shots, and even coming out of the water, I mean it looks flamazing. And about that one I thought, yeah, why not? People have liked owning weird animal stuff for thousands of years. Who am I to judge? Then they uncover a trove of coins that date back to the Emperor Nero, and everyone is super excited because it gives the archaeologists a rough date for this alleged shipwreck. It couldn't have happened before the date printed on the coins, which I think was something like 54 AD. And then they show you pottery and other boring stuff, then it just lulls you into a false sense of security and trust. And that is how they get ya. They get you with the boring stuff. Because why would they show you the boring stuff if it wasn't true? Because they want to get you, that's why. And it's very effective. Then they find the bolt. The only piece of the shipwreck that appears to be left. Here is a clip of the main archaeologist reacting to finding this bolt.

SPEAKER_04 31:42

It was a huge surprise. A huge play. And um this is truly enormous for something of its kind. I've only ever seen a few examples uh from this era, but uh the biggest I've seen I've been from uh a Roman wreck from the French coast, uh La Madrag de Jam. Uh and that ship was big. But this is much bigger, and it's uh it's broken. At the end, you know, it's it's sheared off. So who knows what the actual size would have been.

SPEAKER_07 32:32

I'm telling you, the documentary itself is a pretty good fake. The archaeologist almost cries when he's holding this bolt. It's amazing. From this bolt, they glean that this ship must have been huge. That is when you start to learn about Sif Amaton II, the freed slave who became super duper rich and amassed an incredible collection of art that he put on a boat called the Epistos. The unbelievable. Sif Amiton II planned to scoot his boot over to some unknown location where he was building a temple to display all of his art. Of course, Amaton, his crew, and the artworks never make it to that destination. And somehow the ship and its artwork end up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. As they were talking about this, they are showing you mosaics and papyrus fragments and all kinds of other stuff that seems to confirm the existence of not only this dude, but his boat. After this boring interlude, we flash back to the archaeology people on the boat, who are pulling up the marble elephant skull. Looks super cool. And then they find Pazuzu. Yes, Pazuzu, which is not only a fun word to say, but an actual figure from Mesopotamian folklore. The team pulls out a headless bronze figure that's about one-third life size, so fairly small, and the art historian aboard the ship, Professor Gina Bryant, also fake, is absolutely stunned. Let's listen to the discovery.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

In the 1920s, when British archaeologists were digging in the upper Tigris Valley of the Mesopotamia, they discovered a small settlement along the banks of the river. And among their finds was thought by some to be a head of the Babylonian demon king, Pazuzu.

SPEAKER_07 35:17

Now this is the point where I went from inklings of suspicion to straight up suspicious, because this sculpture does not look like anything I have ever seen from any ancient civilization ever that I've ever seen in space and time. It is way too modern looking, like something you'd see in a CGI monster movie. But those details are only on screen for a few seconds before the documentary cuts to other images of the mythological figure of Pazuzu, and these talking heads tell you all about them. The team goes so far as to question whether or not this headless bronze that they just pulled out of the Indian Ocean might not be the matching piece to a bronze Pazuzu head that was found in the Tigris Valley in 1932. They do so while showing you a black and white photograph of an archaeological dig, including a picture of a guy digging up a bronze demon head. Once again, they are imbuing what they're talking about with a sense of credibility. Because not only are they giving you a source, but they're showing you black and white photographs. Which now that I think about it, I believe were staged for this documentary. I also think this bronze pazuzu head was like part of the shtick. Because it looks like a feral Dobby the house elf meets sloth from the Goonies. Which is a very particular reference that some of you other geriatric millennials, my people, will get. At least as far as the Goonies reference goes. God bless ya. The next thing that the divers pull out of the water is a marble sculpture of a unicorn skull. Weirdly, much less suspicious than the Pazuzu bronze. The idea of horned horses dates back thousands of years, in large part thanks to narwhal horns that would wash up on shore. And if you don't know what a narwhal is, N-A-R-W-H-A-L, you'll definitely want to look it up. They are horrifyingly majestic. Or maybe majestically horrifying. One of the two. Post-unicorn is when things really start to go off of the rails. The stuff they are pulling out of the water just gets increasingly ridiculous with each new object. Starting with a head of medusa made of solid gold. Medusa, the snake-headed monster of Greek mythology. This sculpture is a full-sized severed head that is beautiful. It's absolutely gorgeous. And there is this incredible underwater footage of the golden sculpture emerging from the sand of the seabed. There's also a shot of it being pulled out of the water, and when it breaks the surface, everyone is like, oh my god. It's very cinematic. But absolutely nothing about the head itself looked right to me. This is the point where I finally got my butt off the couch, got my phone, and started beep boop bopping around the internet. Q, two minutes of complete and utter devastation that quickly morphed into embarrassment and shame. I had gotten to about the 30-minute mark without twigging, which, if we're being honest, was probably about 29 and a half minutes too long. In my defense, if we can call it that, which can we? I had never heard of this exhibition and I barely knew anything about Damien Hearst. I had also had a couple glasses of wine, so my art history spidey senses were a little off. But hey, I am not a quitter unless we're talking about exercise. So of course I returned to the couch to finish the documentary. And you know what? I had a freaking blast. Because now I was in on the joke and could see how the story and the objects were just getting more and more ridiculous. To the point where even I was thinking, okay, alright. Like you're you're doing too much, you gotta stop that. But I didn't even know yet that the documentary was going to culminate with the most too much thing of all. Past me was not prepared. After what on camera is made to sound like a three or four year expedition, the team is finally getting ready to pack it in. They go out on one final expedition as their last hurrah, and at the end of the summer, the team is confident, confident that there is nothing left. But the PhD student, who is still annoying, how did they not throw him overboard? He is like, hey, team, the historical records show that Amaton had 100 works on the ship, and we've only found 82. And the team is like, Peter, shush, we've been here for years. There's nothing left to find. But as it turns out, there just so happens to be a drop-off just outside of the diving perimeter that the team has been searching. And when the PhD student brings this up, the head archaeologist, bless him, he looks so sad. It's like this fake man has been away from his fake family every summer for years. Homie just wants to go home. But in classic Hollywood fashion, the archaeologist eventually says something along the lines of, We've got a few days left, let's just shut this kid up and check out this drop-off. They crack out this little underwater remote control vehicle thing and they zoom zoom zoom it down into this trench. Cut to footage from the camera of the little underwater robot, and at first there's just too much debris. You can't really see anything, it's all dirty, the connection isn't good, blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_05 41:21

But then what are these things?

SPEAKER_04 41:31

That is that is nothing.

SPEAKER_05 42:12

Look at that.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Well.

SPEAKER_07 43:26

Just in case the uh viewer hasn't quite figured it out yet, and hey, fair enough. Maybe you don't know what bronze Mesopotamian demons or Greek Medusa heads are supposed to look like. That's not your fault. In the closing minutes of the documentary, you get these incredible shots of the exhibition hall, where the team has put all of this work on display, sharing it with the public. And each work shown on screen gets increasingly bonkers. A portrait bust that looks like Rihanna. A man being squeezed to death by a snake, two women taking massive lions for walks, and even a bust believed to be a portrait of Amatan himself that just so happens to look exactly like Damien Hurst. But we're not finished just yet. Oh no no no no. In the final shot of the documentary, we are returned to the depths of the Indian Ocean, where you see what else but a coral-encrusted statue of Mickey Mouse. Cut to black. I wish there was footage of what my face must have looked like when that final shot appeared on the screen. My jaw was on the floor, and not because I have TMJ, which I do, but that's not the reason here. By this point, I had known for a solid 45 minutes that this whole thing was fake. But the choice to have the last frame of this documentary be Mickey Mouse was like a slap in the face. Now, personally, I think of it as a sort of a snap out of it kind of slap, rather than like a malicious backhand, because it just completely shatters any kind of illusion that someone might have had remaining, which I think was entirely the point. You were not intended to leave the documentary thinking it was real. As you can probably tell, I absolutely love this documentary. I wouldn't have just spent 15 minutes talking about it if I didn't love it. It is by far, well, maybe I shouldn't say that, but it's no, I will say that. It's my favorite thing that came out of this exhibition. And part of that magic was the fact that for the first 30 minutes, I legit thought this was real. While initially devastating, the fact that it's fake actually makes me like it all the more. But not everyone had the same reaction. On IMDB, the documentary now has 1,500 reviews, the vast majority of which are one star. Keep in mind that IMDB scores things out of 10, reminding me of the viral Tyra Banks audio, I can't give you a zero, so I give you a one. If you are ever feeling a little bit down, I highly recommend combing through the reviews of this documentary because some of them are truly hilarious, while others are almost touching in how upset people were when they realized the whole thing wasn't true. Here was one of my personal favorites. It's by someone named Dennis Sammy. And the title of the review is May I Please Have My Time Back. Dennis Sammy writes, quote, thank you for wasting my time. If I had wanted to watch a pile of crap, I would have taken my dog out to the bathroom. What nonsense for exclamation points. Maybe you should consider doing something meaningful with your life. Next time I see something with Damien Hirst's name on it, I will remember to tell everyone I know that he has a few screws loose and needs to be locked away. I mean woof. That makes the one-star reviews of this podcast seem not so bad. But don't go getting any ideas. And that's what a lot of people seem to think this documentary was. Haha, fooled you, let's all laugh at the dum-dum. Now I personally do not think that was the intention, but I can see how other people might think it was. I've even seen the documentary referred to as a mockumentary. But again, I don't get a sense of mockery from it. Yes, it plays into documentary tropes and has a few, you know, wink, wink, wink directed at those in the know, but I never got the sense that it was mocking traditional documentaries so much as imitating them. All for the purpose of creating a spectacle. For me, it was 10 out of 10, rip roaring good time. Would watch again and have watched again multiple times. Now you might be thinking, Lindsay, did you really need to spend 15 minutes giving us a blow-by-blow of this whole documentary? Yes, I did. Because the documentary is not just the closest thing that we have to now experiencing the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition, but I think it's the most convincing aspect of that whole show. It gives you the purest experience of believing in the story, even if you should know better. And given that this was how I was first introduced to the entire story, it has completely framed my perception of the entire exhibition. If I would have walked into the Punta della Dogana or the Palazzo Grassi to see this show when it opened, I would have immediately understood that whatever I was seeing was an elaborate fantasy. It doesn't matter what the wall label said or what the exhibition catalog claimed. No part of me would have been convinced that this was real. Would I have still enjoyed myself immensely? Absolutely. But I would not have believed, because ironically, it is the works themselves that give up the ghost, that betray the illusion. That is why the documentary is so effective, because you encounter a few handful of objects in a carefully curated order that is all designed to reel you in and then show you that you have been bamboozled. Exhibition goers just couldn't have that same experience. Not only were there so many more works on display taking up actual space, but there was nothing keeping you at bay, controlling how you were encountering and seeing the objects. You can do that far more effectively in the documentary than you can in the actual exhibition space. We will get back to the exhibition and some of the works appearing in it in a few minutes. Well, actually, more like uh probably like 20. But for right now, I want to return to the start. Not an East African beach, but the start start, how this exhibition came to be IRL in real life. While the idea for the exhibition came to Hearst sometime around 2008, I am going to go back even further than that. Because after the last episode, a few of you asked me how Hearst went from sticking a shark in a tank to being a millionaire a hundred times over. That is not something I addressed in the last episode, and Damien Hearst's purchasing power is a huge part of this exhibition, so I figure why not talk about it here? We're already in it for the long haul anyway. The 90s to the early 2000s was arguably the peak period of Damien Hearst's career. Over the course of about 15 years or so, Hearst produced hundreds of works, many of which belonged to one of six distinct categories. So, for example, the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living belonged to the natural history series, which tended to feature some kind of dead animal in a display case or tank, often submerged in formaldehyde. Hearst produced dozens of natural history works, each of which sold for an increasingly bogus amount of money. That might seem bonkers, because one, it is, and two, who is paying millions of dollars for a stuffed shark in a tank? But you have to remember that the value, particularly with regards to art, is not something intrinsic, which is to say it's not wholly based on what something costs to make or the cost of the materials. The value of art is almost entirely based on what people are willing to pay for it. And people with massive bank accounts were willing to pay for a work by Damien Hearst, dead animal or not. Other types of artworks that Hearst produced included those belonging to the cabinet series, which are sculpture-y, sort of installation-y works that look like medicine cabinets. Hearst is also very well known for his butterfly paintings, which are quote-unquote paintings that are made using whole butterflies or butterfly wings that Hearst has arranged into some kind of pattern. While horrifying in many ways, the butterfly paintings are probably among my favorite works by Hearst, aesthetically speaking. They are absolutely beautiful. But if I think about it too long, I start to get super grossed out. Because all of them comprise hundreds, if not thousands, of dead butterflies in varying states of wholeness, which is weird. It's yet another example of Damien Hearst's willingness, even eagerness, to step over certain boundaries and upset a lot of people in the name of art. That is, if you call it art, which many people don't. Speaking of things that may or may not be art, I am mostly kidding when I say that, another well-known series of works by Hearst are the dot paintings, which are canvases of varying sizes painted with multicolor polka dots. Now I have come around a bit on the dot paintings, and there are some people out there who really do like them. To whom I say, you know, all the more polka dot power to you. But for me, the dot paintings are the closest I get to thinking that Damien Hearst might actually be a troll. While the jury's still out on that one, I am coming around to the aesthetic allure of the dots. I think part of me just doesn't know what to do with a body of Hearst works that are just completely inoffensive. To the point where I am almost oddly offended by how inoffensive they are. Perhaps that's the magic of them. What else would explain why people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for bright, inoffensive polka dots? Also, many of the dot paintings, like a lot of Hearst's work, were made by assistants, not him. So there's that, but we'll get to that a little bit later. I don't actually have any issue with that. It's just something to note. In addition to some of these categories that I covered, there's a couple of other ones, but I'm not gonna cover them here. There were also some one-offs that you may or may not have heard of, such as the diamond-encrusted skull that Hearst quote unquote made, commissioned, in 2007. It is primarily through his work on series, though, that Hearst made a lot of his money. And by 2005, Home Fry was sitting on a pretty large stash of cash. But the art market and the world more broadly are fickle fickle things. And by 2005-ish, people had had a little bit too much of Damien Hearst. And Damien Hurst didn't give a fig. He didn't give a fig. He didn't care. He threw both middle fingers up in the air and said, voila. I don't know if he actually did that, but it seems in keeping with his character. Hop, skip, and a jump brings us to September of 2008. It was in September of 2008 that Hearst participated in a two-day auction at Southby's in London. When you read about this auction, it's like something out of a Hunger Games book. The affair kicked off the night before with an exclusive party for 1,500 VIPs. Those in attendance washed down gold cover foie gras with the finest of champagnes. That is on record. Gold cover foie gras, which for those of you who don't know, including me, is like spam. Yes, spam. That weird meat in a can stuff, but for rich people. It's a super fancy version of that. I'm assuming most of you know champagne, but in case you don't, that's the bubbly stuff you drink at weddings. That leads to really bad decisions and pretty nasty hangovers. But it is delightful. This party celebrated the launch of a two-day sale featuring one thing on its menu, Damien Hearst. Or should I say, works by Damien Hearst. Over 200 of them, all of which were owned by Hearst himself. The sale was expected to be a success, but no one prepared for just how much a success it was. It netted $198 million, most of which went into Hearst's own pocket. That wasn't the only financial news hitting London, or indeed the world, on the morning of the sale. On the first day of the sale, September 15, 2008, the American finance company, the Lerman Brothers, which had been raking in money since 1858, declared bankruptcy. It is an event that is often seen as the first major domino to fall in what would become the catastrophic 2008 economic crash. But who cares about that when there are dead cows in Formildehyde and big polka dot paintings for sale? I mean, get your priorities straight, okay? As with everything that Hearst does, the 2008 auction caused its fair share of controversy. This time, though, it wasn't just the critics and non-millionaires who were getting their jean shorts in a twist. This time, Hearst had angered even those people who had long stood by him. Before digging into this a little bit more, I want to briefly address the fact that buying art can and often is seen as an investment. And it's usually considered a pretty good investment, or at the very least, a stable one. Art is not supposed to depreciate in value, even though it sometimes does. An example of which you're about to see. But this idea of art as investment has led a lot of very wealthy people, not all, not all, but a lot of very wealthy people to purchase art as if it were a stock. Which is not an inherently bad thing. It's just kind of, I don't know, transactional. It makes me a little sad. But if I had millions of dollars, I'd probably do it too. In the span of 48 hours, in September of 2008, there were 200 more works by Hearst out in the world, some of which had set record sales prices. You would think that would be a good thing, because it shows that works by Hearst could still demand the big bucks. But it's also something that made people who already owned works by Hearst deeply uneasy. Because scarcity and perceived exclusivity are key components in determining the monetary value of artworks. Now, speaking of exclusivity, also controversial was the fact that for decades Hearst's work had been sold through commercial galleries, which served not just as art brokers, but sort of gatekeepers of sorts, who curated not just the art in their gallery spaces, but also the people who were buying it. At least to some extent. Do you think they are going to let any old millionaire come in off the street and just buy a Damien Hearst work? No. Because exclusivity is important, and it's something that goes beyond purchasing power alone. An auction, though, is different. At an auction, anyone with a paddle and a fortune can purchase a work of art. Russian oligarchs, oil tycoons, dictators, that one guy from your high school who got super rich in Bitcoin. Like literally anyone with a paddle, or anyone who can hire someone to go with a paddle and do their bidding. This combination of flooding the art market with works and doing so at auction pissed off a lot of people, many of whom accused Hearst not just of breaking the well-established rules of the art market, but gambling against basic laws of economics. In an article that appeared in The Economist a couple of days before the show, one writer likened the auction to Hearst giving his most staunch supporters the middle finger. But Hearst seems like he could have cared less. And why would he care? He left this auction having made a personal take-home profit of about $170 million. While he didn't really seem to care about offending or alienating his loyal supporters, Hearst did care about something else. At least, he says he did. In the documentary, released alongside the treasures from The Wreck of the Unbelievable, Hearst credits this auction with causing his deep disillusionment with the art world and its markets. And that's coming from a man who had long been accused of turning art into commodity and laughing in the face of those accusations. Pretty wild. Now to be fair, it is hard to tell what in this documentary is real versus what's not real, and uh da. I don't know. But I think what he had to say was pretty compelling. Then again, we've all already seen how much of a sucker I am, so who knows? Let's hear what he had to say.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:06

I'd have the auction where I sold all my works in you know this three-day big sale. And it really was the point where all the work like became commodity, and it was like, you know, it just seemed like you make something sell it, make something sell it, make something selling it. It seemed unsustainable and unfulfilling. For some reason after that auction, it seemed like something had ended and something new was beginning.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:26

It seemed like something had ended and something new was beginning. And who boy was it ever? It is impossible to say whether or not Damien Hearst's take in the documentary about, you know, like this being the turning point for for the project was authentic or not. I think it was, at least to a certain extent, um, which isn't to say that it wasn't hypocritical, given just how much Hearst himself stoked the whole art as commodity thing throughout his career. But I also respect that people contain multitudes. Whatever that situation was, whatever he actually felt after this 2008 auction, we do know that Hearst started producing works for the treasures from the wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition in the same year as the auction in 2008, starting a nine-year project that involved making hundreds of works of art and a fake documentary. Ah, finally, Lindsay, you've barely talked about any of the artwork in the exhibition. Uh, yes, you're right, but you're also wrong. I don't know if I've said this yet, you know, editing gets a little weird, especially with these long episodes, but I would argue that the exhibition itself is the primary artwork, and that every single item within it is one piece of the bigger whole. I know that that probably sounds super pretentious, but that is genuinely how I think about it. That said, there were 900 plus works of art made for it, some of which are truly astounding in more ways than one. Sometimes that is positive, sometimes it is not positive. The exhibition is made all the more unwieldy when you consider that there's not really a unifying principle that brings all of these works together. You could argue that that was by design, because the fictional Amaton II was said to have amassed not just a large collection, but a highly varied collection featuring objects from every corner of the world, including corners that people living in the Mediterranean during the first century were not supposed to know about. So, you know, riddle me that one. Even within the mythology of the fake shipwreck, though, not all 900 works in the exhibition were said to have come from the shipwreck itself. As I said previously, over the course Of the documentary, you discover that there were supposed to be about a hundred works on the epistos. So, how did we get to nearly a thousand works split between two venues that occupy a total of 54,000 squeet squeat? No, square feet of space. Where did all of these works come from? One of the defining features of the exhibition is that most of the major sculptures for the show were produced in triplicate, so there's at least three versions of each one. As a general rule, general rule, it doesn't apply to all of them, but this is the sort of shtick. The first of those works is the quote-unquote salvaged version, or the work that was allegedly pulled up from the ocean, meaning that it was usually covered in like barnacles and cockles and coral and other stuff. Second is the treasure version, or a copy of the original as if it had been fully restored to make it look like new. And lastly, there was the third, which was a reproduction of the same sculpture using different materials than the quote-unquote original. It's not a perfect system, but that's the gist. So between most of the sculptures appearing in triplicate, there were also other things made for the exhibition, like drawings, coins and stuff, other doohickeys, and it all adds up to about 900 works. Now there's no possible way I can tell you about all 900 works, or even the 100 works that allegedly sank, sunk, one of the two, on the epistos. But I do want to talk about some of them. So I've put together a little sort of Lindsay's highlights of the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable. The first work that I'm going to talk about was not just one of the first made for the exhibition back in 2008, but plays a central role in the fabricated story that Damien Hearst devised. The Golden Monkey. The Golden Monkey is the first work that you encounter in the documentary. It's the one that the fishermen find and it sets all this stuff in motion. That sculpture now carries the title The Sadness, which is a pretty apt description of this flattened, emaciated corpse of a monkey curled into some kind of fetal position, of course, all rendered in gold. The clear inspiration point for this sculpture were the animal mummies discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs. That's the surface reference. I did, however, read a brief entry on this work that suggested a deeper symbolism, one that concerns Damien Hearst himself. Hearst is an artist who is synonymous with dead animals. Which I know sounds awful, but let's be real. You cannot stick dead animals in tanks for most of your artistic career and not be known as the dead animal guy. I don't think Damien Hearst would take any issue with that. But the sadness, the golden monkey, is a completely different take on a very common theme in Hearst's work. It is not flesh slowly decomposing in formeldehyde. It is decay immortalized in gold. I, for one, don't think it's a coincidence that Hearst cast this work as the leading lady, or like the leading monkey, in the shipwrecks story, because it represents a kind of, I don't know, apotheosis or culmination of Hearst's natural history series while also being the start of something completely new in the form of the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition, which I think is pretty cool. The second work in our audio tour of the exhibition is the Malachite Head of Medusa. I have already talked a little bit about the golden version of this sculpture, but there were four in total that appeared in the exhibition, the other three being rendered in, of course, gold, bronze, and crystal. But the Malachite Medusa head isn't just the first that Hearst created chronologically, it's also the most visually striking, even more so than its pure gold counterpart. Like how how do you how do you show up something that's pure gold? You make it in Malachite. There is absolutely a reason why this work was chosen as the cover art for the 7 pound exhibition catalog. It is absolutely stunning. And no, I will not stop mentioning that the exhibition catalog is 7 pounds, because I have schlepped that thing far and wide. My back will never be the same. For those who are unfamiliar with it, malachite is an emerald green stone with a marble-esque patterning. But despite being very, very pretty, you do not often see sculptures made of malachite. And that is because it's to die for. With this sculpture though, malachite is kind of the perfect material to use, given the subject matter of the sculpture, the life-sized decapitated head of Medusa, a mythological creature, best known for having snakes for hair, and the ability to turn men into stone with a single glance. Which, just like it was a thousand years ago, is a pretty rad superpower. But in the myths, Medusa wasn't always this vicious monster. Her story is in fact a very grim and tragic one. There's a reason for why in the past 50 years she's become a symbol of feminine rage. But in this sculpture, Medusa is a tragic figure. The sculpture shows Medusa with wide eyes and an even wider mouth. Though whether she's screaming or gasping, it's hard to say. Probably a bit of both, such is the nature of being decapitated. The sculpture is rendered in this exquisite detail, from the anatomical rendering of her severed neck to the scales of the 14 snakes that are still pissed as hell atop her head, forming what is undoubtedly the most impressive part of an exceptionally impressive sculpture. The snakes crowning Medusa's head are so detailed that you can actually determine what species each one is, including the horned viper, the coral snake, and even the Sabah Python. Despite their differences, though, these snakes do have one thing in common. They are very, very poisonous. Quite like the stone from which they are rendered. The third work of art that I want to highlight is the calendar stone, which is a large, say it with me, calendar stone. And when I say large, it's large, measuring over 13 feet in diameter. It's huge. The stone, stone, that's in quotes, is actually painted bronze, complete with the classic coral and barnacles that cling to many of the allegedly salvaged works. This is one of the many works in the exhibition that is clearly inspired by a very specific precedent. The Piedra del Sol, or the Sunstone, in the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, which in itself is an example of a type of object produced by the Aztecs. Now I'm pretty sure that they produced these calendar stones over a period of time, but the one in Mexico City dates to about the 1500s. These types of calendar stones are far more complex than they sound. These kinds of stones didn't just track the passing of days so much as they traced the relationships between time, the gods, the cosmos, humans, and all other kinds of stuff that, when interpreted together, could be used to predict future events, including an impending apocalypse. Uh-huh. Now, to be fair, I didn't read that far into calendar stones, but hopefully I didn't botch any of that too too bad. Now the calendar stone that appears in Damian Hurst's exhibition looks as if someone took an Aztec sunstone and turned it into a movie prop for the next Indiana Jones installment. Or like live-action Road to El Dorado. And yes, I do realize that that is a back-handed compliment. I personally love that kind of stuff, but art critics were not so kind. One of the critiques that you see over and over again with regards to this exhibition is that somehow Damien Hearst managed to make some of the world's most expensive materials look cheap. And while I recognize that movie props are not cheap, there's something about bronze masquerading as stone, covered in almost technicolor fake sea life, that while visually stunning, just looks like a phony, which it is. The calendar stone is still one of my favorite objects in the exhibition, though, and not just because I'm a sucker for a good movie prop. The calendar stone's inclusion in the exhibition is also one of the main works that gives away the shtick of the shipwreck. The shtickwreck, if you will. If the fake epistos was fake shipwrecked in the first or second century common era, that would mean it fake sank more than 1,000 years before the Aztec civilization even came to be. Much less the people living in the Eastern Hemisphere, you know, somehow knew that the Americas existed, which at the time they did not. That's what you call a wrench in the timeline, something that Hearst and his associates undoubtedly knew. Why include it then, apart from the fact that it looks super cool? You include it because it's one of many objects in the exhibition that makes you second guess what you're seeing and being told, versus what you might know to be historically true. And there's different levels of that that happen throughout the show, so clearly with this one, you would have to know quite a bit about Aztec history and like Mediterranean trade and exploration routes and all that stuff. Your average museum goer probably isn't going to know that stuff. But those of us who grew up watching MythQuest and playing the Nancy Drew computer game The Secret of the Scarlet Hand, we would have known. Mm-hmm. Nancy taught us well. For your average, non-Nancy Drew playing exhibition goer, the calendar stone is exactly the kind of thing you'd assume you would find on a shipwreck, according to every adventure movie ever made. The fourth item on our tour is a red marble portrait entitled Autin. The sculpture is probably two or three times life size. It's been several years since I've seen it, but I remember it being big, and it shows a woman wearing a pharaoh's crown. The woman's eyes are closed as she tilts her face upwards to the sun. It's a fitting pose, as the sculpture is named for the Egyptian sun god Aten, who Pharaoh Akhenaten, the father of Tutankhamun, named the one true god during the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, much to the dismay of the Egyptian people. The portrait itself, though, is not Aten. It is instead the pop culture icon Rihanna. Yes, it is very clearly, unmistakably Riri, including her exact tattoos and a golden nipple ring, which I am assuming is accurate, but I am not inclined to fact-check. And this sculpture of Aten Rihanna is just one of many appearing in the exhibition that conflates real, recognizable people in pop culture, with mythical or historical figures of the distant past. As an entry for this sculpture once stated, in doing this, in having pop culture figures sort of associated with historical or mythical ones, Hearst creates a kind of slippage, not just between past and present, but also between fact and fantasy. Something of which we will see more in just a few minutes. The fifth work is the double, if not triple, life-sized representation of the goddess Kali fighting the Hydra. I'm particularly referencing the salvaged bronze work, the one covered in barnacles and stuff, but there were several included in the show in varying materials. This bronze salvaged sculpture shows the Hindu goddess Kali, best recognized by her six arms, each of which holds a sword. And she is up against the Hydra, a seven-headed serpentine monster from Greek mythology. Uh, why exactly is a Hindu goddess fighting a Greek monster? That's a good point. I will say though, that this work doesn't reference an actual myth, but rather a pastiche or a combination of myths. One that might be familiar to those who have seen the movie The Clash of the Titans. And no, I'm not talking about the one with Sam Worthington from the 2000s. We're talking The Oridge, the 1980s Clash of the Titans. Damien Hearst is on record saying that he was inspired to make Kali fighting the Hydra by a fight scene in that movie. Now I can't confirm where that scene occurs in the movie, because as much as I love a good bad movie, I watched the trailer and barely made it through that. So apparently my dedication to my craft only goes so far. This sculpture of Kali fighting the Hydra is one of my favorites from the show, in part because it's like a microcosm for the bigger exhibition. It's big, it's bonkers, it's beautiful, cover girl. But it's also because this is the sculpture that appears in the final moments of the documentary. When the little robot goes out to investigate this trench. The sculpture emerges from the deep like a shadow, confirming that there is more indeed to find. And they actually put this sculpture in the Indian Ocean. They submerged it in the ocean for the purposes of an underwater photo shoot, which, as the youths might say, is pretty metal, which I also suppose is literal, because the sculpture is made of bronze. While Kali fighting the Hydra looks super cool in the documentary and in the underwater photographs, but it turns out that in the water the colors of it were a bit more muted. Whereas above water, the painted bronze sea creatures are practically technicolor. It is bright, it is tacky, and it is awesome. And while some might argue that art should not be tacky, that it should be beautiful and intellectual and tasteful, shush, allow me to feel joy. My personal final verdict is that Kali and the Hydra is cool as hell, even if it is absolutely ridiculous. Like I said, it's a microcosm of the show. Perhaps more ridiculous, even the most ridiculous, is the sixth work on our adventure, a bronze sculpture called Collector with Friend. This slightly larger-than-life sculpture depicts a man, the collector, apparently, holding hands with Mickey Mouse. Mick Mouse. Like the Calendar Stone, this work is also based on a direct precedent, or should I say precedents. One that you, dear listener, may have encountered before. I know I have, even if I don't remember it. That sculpture, the real-life sculpture, I mean, this sculpture is real life as well, but you know, the precedent, is a sculpture called Partners, which shows Walt Disney holding hands with Mickey Mouse. Several versions of Partners exist, each of which is located near the entrance of several Disney theme parks throughout the world. And to give credit where credit is due, the artist of those sculptures was a longtime Disney employee by the name of Blaine Gibson. In the Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition, Hearst copies partners to a T, but instead of Walt Disney, Hearst casts himself as the figure with Mickey Mouse. Now it's a little hard to tell because the figure's face is largely consumed by a sea sponge and looks like something out of HBO's The Last of Us. But if you know Hearst, you would look at this and be like, oh yeah, that's, you know, that's Damien Hearst. But it's also kind of not, because as suggested by the title of the sculpture, Collector with Friend, Hearst is inhabiting the identity of Sif Amiton II. As for Mickey Mouse, uh, Mr. Mouse appears several times, not just in this exhibition, but also in Hearst's previous work, including a spot painting that is rather delightful. With regards to that painting specifically, Hearst explained that he was drawn to Mickey Mouse for his timelessness, as the character still exhibits the same level of pull and charisma, which feels a little weird to say about a mouse, but whatever, it's true, for current generations as he did way back in 1928. While Hearst specifically said that about the spot painting, I think it's safe to say that there's a similar rationale behind including Mickey Mouse in the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition. Because even though it's utterly ridiculous and throws off the entire vibe of the show, I think it is a far more interesting inclusion that people give it credit for. Yes, it is very strange to see a barnacle-encrusted Mickey Mouse statue at the bottom of the ocean in the closing minutes of the documentary. But, but, if not melted down, which is the more likely fate of them, might not the copper sculptures at Disneyland Parks be one day fished from the ocean and mistaken for some kind of weird cultic representation? So, yes, the inclusion of Mickey Mouse is ridiculous and it dislodges any lingering hope that the shipwreck story might be real. But if you resist the impulse to completely disregard it, it can lead to some very interesting questions about our relationship to pop culture and our relationship to generations that we will never get to meet. The seventh and final sculpture that I want to highlight is one that was not allegedly discovered as part of the Wreck of the Epistos, though it did appear in the show. That is the 18-meter or 50-foot-tall sculpture of Pazuzu. Yes, Pazuzu. So fun to say. But it was determined that the bronze sculpture would have been too heavy for the Palazzo Grassi to handle, to which I say no duh, the Palazzo Grassi is basically built on stilts. So instead, once they figured out they couldn't actually use the bronze original that cost them fourteen million dollars to make, Damien Hearst instead opted to create a resin version that I believe they then painted to look like bronze. And hoboy did they need a lot of resin because the sculpture is so big that in 2017 there were no cameras that could photograph the entire thing, at least not from any of the angles available in the palazzo. It was huge, and being in the courtyard was constantly visible as viewers went through the exhibition. Now I'm not sure how this behemoth of a pazuzu was explained as part of the exhibition. But I can tell you that it was never explained in the documentary. In the middle of the documentary, you do see the smaller bronze pazuzu, but then at the end the camera kind of like zooms up the leg of the resin pazuzu, the 54-footer, while never explaining the discrepancy in scale. The sculpture is meant to destabilize the viewer. It's meant to make you think, wait, have I been shrunk? A la honey I shrunk the kids, or is that pazuzu a million times bigger than it was when I last saw it? And they never explain it. While some visitors to the exhibition thought this sculpture was absolutely absurd, other reviewers mentioned just how effective it was as a kind of framing technique for the show, both in its overwhelmingness of size, but also in its visibility. Because given how the floors of a palazzo encircle the central courtyard, part of this pazuzu was visible no matter where you were in the exhibition. It was just always there, lurking, a demon with a bowl. I am not entirely sure what came of the resin version of this sculpture. I found one source that stated it had been destroyed. But I do know that in 2019, the bronze version, the bronze original, was purchased by the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas for an undisclosed amount of money. It is now displayed on the little concrete island in the middle of one of the hotel's pools, making it very, very vague. Those seven works that I just covered give you some insights into just how varied this exhibition was in terms of both subjects and objects. It is truly astounding and quite frankly, exhausting. That begs the question, how, how, how in the world did Damien Hearst pull this thing off? The answer is he had help. A lot of help. That is not unusual for Hearst. Many of the works that bear his name were not professionally made by him. He comes up with a concept, probably provides some sketches, and then consults on the process. Someone else, however, is carrying out the work. There are lots of people who point to this method of working as a kind of proof that Damian Hearst is no other artist than a con artist. And while I can see why people think that, as someone who specialized in Renaissance and Baroque art, specifically of Italy, I am very familiar with the fact that even some of the greatest artists of all time had a lot of help producing their works. Often having entire workshops of people helping them make their stuff. What Damien Hearst did and continues to do isn't exactly that, but it's close enough that I personally take very little issue with it. Now, if I were a buyer, I might feel different. But again, I never claim not to be a hypocrite. And I don't have to worry about that, because I got my PhD in art history, which I'm gonna let you in on a little sneaky secret, is not a great way to get rich. Not surprisingly, there's not a ton of information about the people involved in the production of artworks for the show. Having that kind of information freely available would ruin the illusion not just of the shipwreck, but of Damien Hearst not just as artist, but as maker, which he was not. I did, however, mosey my way on over to the exhibition catalog, where in the very back of the book there's a list of companies and individuals who warranted a special thanks for their involvement in the show. Long story short, I looked up every single company listed in the special thanks section, and in doing so I now have a pretty good idea of who contributed what. So for example, the company called Polly, the Art of Carving, in Eidar Oberstein, Germany, specializes in carving precious gemstones. I would gander that that company probably had something to do with the Malachite head of Medusa. On the other hand, sculptures and materials like granite and marble were likely produced by the company Studio SEM, which specializes in those materials. My favorite company listed was Bentley and Skinner, a super high-end jewelry shop with an elite clientele that once included the late Queen Elizabeth II. No big deal. There were also several dive companies banked, such as Buccaneer Diving and the Kenya Marine Contractors. Based on this fact that the diving companies listed were all based in East Africa, my guess is that the team really did go to the Indian Ocean, chuck all of this stuff in the water, and then pretended to find it and haul it back out. All of that was captured by underwater photographer Christopher Garrick, whose photographs are the ones featured in the exhibition. At the top of the list of individuals to thank, separated from the rest of the list, so you know they're important, and I am going to butcher these names, apologies. But those two individuals are Runeway Kingdon and Claude Koenig, the founders of Pangolin Editions, a foundry that likely handled much of the bronze work featured in the exhibition, and one with which Damian Hearst has been working almost since the start of his career. In fact, Hurst's patronage is probably a big reason why the foundry went from a two-person endeavor to now employing over 200 people. There's not a ton of information on Pangolin Editions, which again makes sense because they work with some pretty big artists, but I was tickled to find a 2010 article by Catherine Milner. For that article, which appeared in the newspaper The Telegraph, Milner visited the foundry to interview the founders and to do a little poking around, respectfully, of course, in the name of journalism. Of all of the things that she saw during her visit, Milner wrote the following, quote, Most intriguing is some casts sitting on a shelf, which I could swear had Damien Hearst large Garuda written on them, a kind of Hindu deity. End quote. Milner asked about this and was immediately told, one, the Foundry could not discuss it, as their work requires discretion, and two, she was mistaken. The casts didn't say Garuda, but garda, a term that they used around the Foundry. Flash forward to 2017, when the whiff of gaslighting had faded from the air, and a bronze work entitled Two Garudas goes on display in the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition. Milner's hunch had been correct. Damien Hurst had been working on something in 2010, even if she didn't know what. Garde my Tush. The article written by Milner also included some other interesting tidbits. The first is just the sheer amount of work it takes to make one bronze sculpture. One of the first works the foundry ever produced for Hearst was a massive bronze sculpture called The Hymn, which looks like an anatomical model that just so happens to be 35 feet tall. It took 15 people working full time over the course of a year to produce that sculpture. So just imagine the time and the people power that went into producing dozens, if not hundreds, of bronze sculptures for the 2017 exhibition. Something that the Foundry had clearly been working on since at least 2010, which is when Milner saw the cast for the two Garudas. In her article, Koenig and Kingdon also absolutely dismiss the idea that Damian Hearst is a hack who doesn't make his own art. They also attest to the fact that Hearst is very involved in the design process and visits the foundry often to not just check on progress, but to tweak designs based on how they're turning out. Koenig and Kingdon are very complementary of Hearst, and why would they not be? He's their best patron. The two also know the history of their craft, one that includes Rodin, who had no fewer than 50 people in his employ when he was producing some of his most lauded works. This whole workshop thing is nothing new. What is new are the techniques available to assist in the creation process. I thought it was interesting how there are reviews of the show that state that many of the sculptures look as if they were 3D printed. And I don't know if those people writing the reviews knew just how close they were to the truth. Bronze casting foundries and even marble sculpting professionals now have a bevy of technology at their disposal. It can help create molds, designs, and even carve objects without much human intervention. That brings me to my greatest critique of the exhibition. I don't even really know that it's a critique so much as something I wish Hearst would have done instead. It's not my show, but it is my podcast episode. So as delighted as I am by the documentary and the exhibition's concept, even I will say that there is just too much of it. And once you start to look closer, it all falls apart so easily. The commitment to the fantasy and the story of it all oscillates between overly committed, such as having real professionals write catalog essays as if it were all real, including with fabricated sources, and on the other end of things, completely half-assed. And in giving one butok there, I am being quite generous. I would have loved it, loved it, if Damian Hurst had really committed to the shipwreck ruse. That he had tried to make works that looked Greek and Roman, that he had chosen to create things that would have realistically appeared in the collection of a first or second century rich dude. I want to be fully deceived. I want to be art history catfished. But that was clearly not the intention. If it had been, you wouldn't have included recognizable figures like Mickey Mouse and Rihanna. That leads to one of the most consistent critiques and, in some cases, condemnations of the show, which is that it was never really about the art or the concept at all. Instead, those individuals claim that the exhibition was not just driven by, but engineered for one major purpose: making money. Now, before I get into all this, I want to state very clearly that I personally do not think it was just about the money. My working theory is that Damien Hurst had a genuinely interesting idea for this fake shipwreck, one that he was excited about, but that at some point it became more about the stuff than the story. As far as money is concerned, the exhibition, the works, the documentary, all of that, cost tens of millions of dollars to create and stage. With most of that money coming out of the pockets of Hearst and Francois Pinault, the guy who owned the two exhibition spaces. Of course, they wanted a return on investment. It's just that they seem to have gone a little, if not a lot, overboard in their pursuit of profit, to the point where it all became a bit shameless. There is absolutely no reason why this exhibition had to have 900 works, almost all of which were not just on sale, but went on sale before the exhibition even opened. The whole thing was very hush-hush because it might disrupt the illusion, and even buyers weren't allowed to see the works before they bought them. Instead, someone from Damien Hurst's company would personally go to a potential buyer and show them the works on an iPad. This marketing technique seemed to work, because by the time the show opened, a significant portion of the works on display were already spoken for. And within just one month of the exhibition opening, 70% of the works had sold. Those sales ranged in price, from small jade sculptures selling for a few hundred thousand dollars, no big deal, to the Malachite Medusa head, which sold for about four million. As a result, in a measly four weeks, the net worth of Hearst's company tripled. Once again, like clockwork, there was a chorus of people, mostly art critics, who absolutely pilloried Hearst in their reviews, casting him as some kind of money-obsessed glutton who saw art as mere commodity to be bought, sold, and bartered. It didn't matter what he said in the fake documentary. What matters is what he did. Art critic Laura Cumming went so far as to question whether Hearst was engaging in some kind of self-parody with this exhibition. Why else would you cast yourself as the collector, as Amaton, a man whose greed and desire to possess material objects sealed his doom? And the word cast is both figurative and literal, in that the portraits of the collector, Amaton, were self-portraits of Hearst, cast in bronze. It's all very screwy. There were also plenty of other con controversies, what am I British? Controversies that plagued the show beyond this clear emphasis on profit, the most searing of which were accusations of cultural appropriation and claims of plagiarism. With regards to cultural appropriation, those accusations revolved around Hearst, making objects that clearly reference those of another culture. So for example, there is a work in the exhibition called Golden Head, that is very clearly, like very clearly, based on a traditional Yoruba sculpture from Nigeria called the Ife Heads, the most famous of which were unethically taken out of Nigeria. These are not the same things as the Benin Bronzes, but the conversations around them are very similar. For more on the Benin Bronzes, see previous episodes. The fact that Hearst, a white British man, created what is essentially a copy of an Ife head, an emblem of Nigerian culture that was unethically taken from the country, pissed a lot of people off. And you can see why it would. This was all made worse by the fact that Hearst then profited from selling the Golden Head. And while, yes, there were many other works of art in the show that reference different civilizations and religions, the Golden Head was particularly insensitive, given that there are ongoing conversations about the repatriation of African material culture in British and more broadly Western museums. As for how Hearst and his associates responded to this, that they mention the Ife heads in all of their descriptions of the object, essentially crediting the original. They also claim that the inclusion of such an object is in keeping with the concept of the show, given that Amaton II was a prolific collector of objects from around the world. As to whether or not people bought that, uh, not really. And should they have? Probably not. Another controversy of this show is that Hearst's salvaged works, which is to say the ones that look like they've been overgrown with coral, look remarkably similar to those made by British sculptor Jason DeKara's Taylor. Taylor is best known for his creation of underwater sculpture parks and museums. Yes, you heard that correctly. Underwater sculpture parks and museums. The sculptures featured in these environments are exactly what you'd think. They are sculptures submerged in a marine environment, where they are left for years and years until they become one with the ocean's ecosystem. The visual outcome is remarkably similar to the fake salvaged works that Hearst created. As if the sheer visual resemblance between the works wasn't enough. At the same time that Hearst's exhibition was happening in Venice, Taylor was exhibiting a handful of works at the Venice Biennale, a famous contemporary art event held in Venice every couple of years. That exhibit included photographs of Taylor's actual work in the ocean that look exactly like the photographs on display in Hearst's exhibition, the ones showing divers discovering coral-encrusted works. None of this escaped the attention of Jason DeKara's Taylor, who made a post on his Facebook page at the time, it was 2017, that showed these photographs side by side. He included the caption, quote, People are saying I got Damien Hursted or ripped off by his latest show in Venice. What do you think? End quote. And then he put a bunch of hashtags, one of which was hashtag love. He then posted a comment to that post, writing, quote, thanks for all your kind comments and feedback. I am actually exhibiting in Venice in a few weeks' time. No $50 million budget, but the culmination of a lot of work. I need to see it in person before I make up my mind. End quote. Based on some of his later posts, he did make up his mind, and let's just say there wasn't a lot of hashtag love going on then. Now I still struggle to determine what is and is not plagiarism when it comes to visual art. There's no clear-cut answers to that, but I can absolutely see why Jason DeKara's Taylor would be pissed. Jason DeKara's Taylor was not the only person who was pissed, though he probably had the greatest reason for being so. As it turns out, the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition made a lot of people feel a lot of things. You've already gotten a little bit of a preview of what some people have said, but let's dedicate a couple of minutes to the whole critic shebang. As one might expect of Damien Hurst and his work, the response from critics was fairly polarizing. There were two camps in particular one that was amazed by the cinematic nature of the show and the grandeur of it all, and those who were sickened by By exactly those same things. Critic Tiernan Morgan wrote one of the more brutal negative reviews of the show. I mean, it's beautifully written, but it's it's quite harsh. Uh, and that article is titled Damien Hearst's Shipwreck Fantasy Sinks in Venice. There was a lot of water and ship puns being used, which is something I highly respect. In that article, Morgan called the exhibition a showroom for oligarchs, and undoubtedly the most expensive flop in living memory. Morgan was also one of the individuals who said it was remarkable that Damian Hearst had managed to make some of the world's most expensive materials look so cheap. Which is just, I mean, accurate, but yes. Harsh? Yes. And while I personally had a had a different opinion of the show than than Morgan did, mind you, I didn't see it, at least not in its original version, but whatever. What I liked about Morgan's article was that he too saw the promise in the concept of the show. And he writes really well about how Hearst might have achieved that vision of like an actual shipwreck, done an actual ruse, and what that might have been like. Another review that had a couple of good zingers in it was by James Pinero, who called the exhibition the death of taste and more than an abject failure. Yes, more than an abject failure. I mean, what is this? A report card on me getting a prom date? My goodness. Now I don't think Pinero meant this to be funny, but I also laughed at a line in his review, uh, which accused Hearst of turning Venice into Vegas and condemned the exhibition's quotes, flood of modern effluvium, end quote. Now I thought effluvium just meant spit, but according to the dictionary, it can also be any harmful or unpleasant discharge. I don't even know what this dude meant by that, but I thought it was a hilariously pretentious burn. Other critics called the exhibition fake heritage for a fake news era, the one that looks and feels utterly gorgeous. Another uses the word oligarch, that's one of the favorite words that comes up here, oligarch, which essentially means an exceptionally wealthy business person who's like, you know, into politics. So Tiernan called it the showroom for oligarchs, another writer called it a Disneyland for oligarchs. You get the picture. In reviews that appeared in the Telegraph, one writer called the exhibition a spectacular bloated folly, and a normity that may prove the shipwreck of Hearst's career. Another writer for The Telegraph stated, It all feels tawdry and low rent, tinny and fake. As delightful as it is to read some of these bad reviews, um, not not because I I like people criticizing things, but just they're funny. You know, while I have different feelings, a girl can appreciate a turn phrase. A girl can appreciate snark. I love snark. That said, not all of the reviews were bad. In the better reviews, and in some of the more critical ones as well, there's one word that comes up more often than just about any other. And no, it's not oligarch, though that one would be sort of at the top of the list. That word is spectacle, which is probably the single most appropriate word to describe the exhibition and its concept. There were plenty of people who, like me, delighted in the drama and the concept of it all, who looked at the 18-meter tall Pazuzu and felt awe, who walked amid coral-encrusted sculptures and felt a sense of adventure and of mystery. And I can say that for certain, because three years ago, almost to the day, I had the privilege of seeing many of these works at an exhibition at the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Now, funnily enough, I don't know if it's you know haha funny, but whatever, I had gone to the Borghese Gallery completely ignorant of the fact that this exhibition was on show. I just wanted to go see some cool Bernini sculptures and you know Caravaggio paintings. So imagine my utter delight when I saw the banner hanging on the outside of the building that told me this show was on display. At that point, I had obviously seen the documentary, I knew the story and that it was fake, but I hadn't really engaged with the exhibition beyond that. And let me tell you, walking into the Borghese Gallery to see this show was the closest I have come to childhood giddiness in years. And this wasn't a situation in which there was like a separate designated space for the exhibition versus the permanent collection. It was all interspersed together throughout the entire museum. And I was completely and utterly captivated. Now I don't know how many works appeared in the Borghese exhibition versus the original, but there's no way it could have been all or even half of them. The original exhibition covered over 54,000 square feet of space. And that is really hard for me to imagine, because at the Borghese, I remember the sheer amount of stuff on display was overwhelming, and not necessarily in an awe-inspiring way. Like I did feel awe when I was walking through it, I was like, this is so cool, but it also felt a little bit claustrophobic. There was just too much to look at, and I had the pervasive thought that there is no way in heck that any of that was up to fire code. I don't even know if fire codes exist in Italy, but if they do, this was not following it. There was just so much stuff. And on top of the treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable objects, there were also a bunch of dot paintings in the mix, which I found to be a very interesting curatorial choice. Um, and that is all I will say about that. Setting aside the overwhelmingness of it all, there is nothing quite like seeing works of art in person. That is obviously true of most, if not all art, but it's definitely true of this art. Many of the works that Damien Hurst and his collaborators made for the exhibition are stunning, particularly the level of detail invested in the quote-unquote salvaged works. I once saw a review that referred to the sea creatures and like coral and stuff on the sculptures as poorly painted. But everything that I saw was pretty incredible. And whoever curated the exhibition, I don't know if it was Ellen Aguena, like it was in the first one, but whoever whoever curated this exhibition at the Borghese did a wonderful job of putting Damian Hearst works in conversation with works from the permanent collection. So for example, the Borghese is home to the painting that I cover in episode 30, Lady with a Unicorn, attributed to Raphael. It's one of the jewels of the collection. In that same gallery space, along with the lady with the unicorn, the curator placed the skulls of the unicorns that Hearst made for the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibit, including the one in Carrara marble that legit looks like a real skull. And seeing that in conversation with Raphael's painting was at once obvious, but also genius. I liked the show so much that I went back a few days later with my buddies Christy and Jean. That is Jean Domermouth, host of the incredible podcast What is a Painting? And while I do not recall what what Christy and Jean thought of the exhibition, I was just as enchanted the second time around as I was by the first. But I can also understand that one woman's opinion, even my own, does not a success make. There is absolutely zero question that this exhibition was a commercial success, given that Hearst's company, cheekly called Science Limited, tripled, tripled its net worth over the course of the show in 2017. Unlike the auction of 2008, there didn't seem to be as much anger over this exhibition, one that ushered exponentially more artworks by Damien Hearst into the market and the world. As to the sort of critical reception of the exhibition, I would say it was pretty 50-50. Though there did seem to be a general consensus that this wasn't the comeback that Damien Hearst might have wanted for himself, even if he made boatloads of money. Much like before the treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition, Damien Hearst didn't have another major exhibition of new works for about six years following the show. He went very quiet. In 2022, he had his first major solo exhibition and his first one in Japan, where he unveiled a new series of works called Cherry Blossoms. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, Hearst produced over 100 paintings of cherry blossom trees, though whether he did them himself or with a team remains unclear. The paintings are these lovely post-impressionist-esque renderings that strike me as a mix between Hearst's dot paintings and the almond blossom paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. They are bright, exuberant, and very, very large. Hearst used so much paint on his canvases that the surface of each one assumes an almost sculptural quality. One that reminds me, at least, you know, at least a smidge, of the barnacles and the coral that consumed the surface of many of the bronze works appearing in the 2017 show. But the cherry blossoms are not the story of a shipwreck. They are one of hope and rebirth, of seasons changing rather than tides. Speaking of seasons changing, I don't know what the future brings for Damien Hurst, who is now 59 years old. But I hope that he continues to surprise us, to polarize us, and to make us question how a working-class hooligan from Leeds became one of the most commercially successful living artists of all time. But I can't leave it there. I want to look back, back to the thing that for me started it all. The documentary, which, unless you're lucky and stumble upon an exhibition of works from the show, is the closest that most of us will come to ever experiencing the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable ourselves. While the documentary has been taken off of Netflix, the entirety of it is available to watch for free on YouTube. In many ways, I am glad that the story continues to exist in that form. The one that, for me, was the most effective expression of the exhibition's concept. The thing that it aspired to be and do. It was, hands down, the greatest messenger of the story of Amatan II and the shipwreck of the Epistos. A delightful fiction that I was convinced, if only for a moment, was true. To end, I want to leave you with a quote by the man himself, Damien Hearst, who rightly closes the documentary. As the camera pans around the exhibition, you hear Hurst speaking a line that I think about often. Let's hear it straight from him.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:01

Somehow collectively, some collective truth.

SPEAKER_07 2:04:35

Belief in the past, belief in God, living gods, or not believing. And belief is a strange thing, because there's no absolute truth. Artists don't have the answers, science doesn't have the answers, religion doesn't have the answers. But somehow, collectively, we create some kind of a truth. And whether you believe in anything or not, I think we need something. The one that shows a barnacle encrusted Mickey Mouse at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Despite being frustrating, unsatisfying, even enraging, it really is an ingenious way to end this documentary. After all, what is more unbelievable than that? That is all I have for you today on Damien Hearst and the treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable exhibition. I hope that you enjoyed the episode as much as I enjoyed making it. I also appreciate those of you who stuck it out till the end, because I have a feeling this is going to be about two hours long. Not quite sure yet, who knows how this is all gonna go in editing, but it's it's uh it m it's long. But we're not quite done yet, because as longtime listeners know, I believe in citing my sources, a full list of which can be found on the podcast's website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. It is also on that same website that I post all images related to the episode. So if you go over there, you can find all of it. But here at the end of the show, I like to acknowledge some of the most majorist of sources that I consulted. The first of those is, of course, the documentary that I never stop talking about. You can find that whole thing, all 90-ish minutes of it, on YouTube. Just search Damien Hearst's Shipwreck and it'll come straight up. The poster of that documentary, which I don't know if they're like official or they're just people who post stuff on YouTube, I don't know, but the name of them is Henny Talks. H-E-N-I talks. You should definitely go and watch that and let me know what you think about it because I'm very curious. I also heavily consulted the exhibition catalog that was published in 2017, the one that weigh seven pounds. While the catalog does contain a lot of very good material, including the bonkers essays by actual professionals who pretend this whole thing was real, the book is not terribly readable. But if you get that book from a library like I did, you want to be very careful in how you maneuver it. It is big and heavy and the spine is not very strong. I'm a little scared of what the library is going to say when I return it to them. But anyway, that's it, that's a me problem. I also read a ton of articles about the exhibition itself. The writers of those articles include James Cahill, David Coleman, Laura Cumming, John Darlington, Elizabeth Green, and Justin Leidwanger. Justin, I'm so sorry. Justin Leidwanger. Of all of those individuals, um, I enjoyed reading all of their articles, but Vogel and Morgan's were especially helpful, as was the one that appeared in the Telegraph in 2010 by Katherine Milner. You can find all of those sources and much, much more on the podcast website, which once again is stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. If you enjoyed this episode or have been enjoying the podcast more broadly, I would really, really appreciate it if you considered leaving it a rating or a review wherever you might listen. That's just that makes my whole day. It helps more people find the show, and I am so appreciative of everyone who does that. So thank you in advance for that. You are also very welcome to reach out to me directly, either through the podcast website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. There's a contact me tab, and now a new sort of recommend a thing tab where you can put in recommendations of things you might want to hear about in future episodes. There's also always the option to email me directly at stuffaboutthingspodcast at gmail.com. It usually does take me like two or three weeks to respond. I'm very slow. Like I see them when they come in and they make my whole life, but I like to respond to them when I have a little time. I can sit down on my computer and like pop out a response. So it might take me a little bit, but I do always respond. As for Gus Corner, which is the 30 seconds I used to talk about my dog, the love of my life, Gus, Gus has reached a milestone this summer, which is retirement. That is retirement from trail walks. For 11 years he was king of the trail, but it is now time for a new vanguard to take over. Between the heat and arthritis, Gus instead prefers to hang out in the yard, where he continues to oversee all security and landscaping efforts, which is a very important job. I am currently home with him right now, and I love him so much, even if he doesn't move like he used to. To be honest, me neither. I'm 34 and I'm falling apart, mostly mentally. As for me, corner, I am working hard. Working hard. It's a busy time at work, uh, and I live for the hours spent researching podcast episodes in my Saturday morning macaroon fix. I go to the farmer's market every Saturday morning and I buy six macaroons and I eat every single one of them and call it breakfast. Anyway, I'm delirious. I've been recording for like a full week, so I'm gonna sign off. Uh I do hope to be back with a mini sode in a couple of weeks because I promised to make a certain mini sod for my mom. So I'll have that up in a couple of weeks. Um, it is going to be related to this episode, but it has nothing to do with Damien Hearst, Mickey Mouse, or Conceptual Arts. So you've you've got that to look forward to. But for right now, I will bid the usual thanks to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org, which provide the royalty-free music that you hear at the top and at the end of the episode. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, while the second job dear tune is called Success Dreams. That is it from me, but it wouldn't be an episode ender if I didn't remind you once more to take the time to look at something beautiful today. You deserve it.