The layered lines repeated throughout the roughly 100-day exhibition period. At the Seoul Box of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) on Samcheong-ro in Jongno-gu, Seoul, lines of visitors waiting toward the exhibition entrance stretched two and three rows deep, almost encircling Damien Hirst's unicorn-shaped work "Myth." Even when told they would have to wait more than an hour, few showed any sign of displeasure. And this was after already waiting a long time to buy tickets on the spot at the ticket booth in the first-floor lobby. This was the scene Friday, one day before the closing of the MMCA special exhibition "Damien Hirst: There Are No Truths, Only Versions," which opened March 20.
On June 8, two and a half months after the opening, the museum officially announced cumulative visitor numbers of about 440,000. An average of 5,645 people visited per day. This matches the pace of the box-office success of the exhibition by Australian contemporary artist Ron Mueck, which drew 530,000 visitors over 90 days last year.
Given the daily average visitor numbers, the Damien Hirst exhibition already comfortably surpassed 500,000 cumulative visitors last week. Rather, with the weekend effect overlapping with the crowd of visitors flocking to the show's final stretch, attention is focused on whether it will exceed the highest box-office record set by Ron Mueck.
■The Secret Behind the 500,000 Success: The Enfant Terrible Buzz and the Alchemy of Criticism
Why was it so popular? The primary factor drawing the public was undoubtedly word of mouth based on the fact that this was "the last chance in this lifetime to see this many of his major works at once in Korea."
The mere fact that works gathered in one place — including the giant shark in a formaldehyde tank, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," treated as a cultural heritage in Britain; "For the Love of God," a human skull cast in platinum and set with 8,601 diamonds; and "A Thousand Years," composed of a severed cow's head, flying flies and their carcasses — was enough to stir excitement.
The true spark of the box-office success was paradoxically kindled by the controversy surrounding the artist and the self-deprecating criticism inside and outside the art world. The question "Why now, in Korea, and why of all people Damien Hirst? And at a national museum, no less?" had been circulating even before the exhibition opened. Hirst is the figure who led the YBA, which brought about the revival of British contemporary art in the 1990s and created a global sensation. At the same time, he has faced criticism for excessively commercializing life and death and cleverly exploiting the logic of capital. This is why skepticism arose over whether a public museum should spend a massive budget to bring in an outdated master who relies on sophisticated marketing and shock tactics.
But the analysis is that such controversy and criticism instead strongly stimulated the public's intellectual curiosity and became a catalyst for the success. It was a kind of noise marketing. The "conversation with the audience" featuring the artist, who visited Korea on the 10th, filled up its first-come, first-served registration for 120 visitors in "one second." In an interview with domestic media held the same day, Hirst candidly revealed of the cow's head displayed in his major work "A Thousand Years," "It's actually fake," saying, "In the past, I had no choice but to use a real cow's head and had to replace it every 24 hours, but now technology has advanced so there's no need to use a real cow's head." He stressed that for a conceptual artist, what matters is "not the actual object, but making that idea exist in the viewer's mind." He also said of the enthusiasm focused on the exhibition, "Museum visitor numbers are declining wherever you go in the world, but Korea is an exception with many young-generation visitors, which is surprising," and expressed his gratitude: "I'm very thankful that young Korean audiences love my works from 30 years ago this much." In fact, in the age distribution of visitors compiled by the museum, visitors in their 20s and 30s accounted for 62%.
■Reflection Beyond Shock
Setting aside the controversy and box-office success, the art-historical significance and value of this exhibition are clear. As the first large-scale solo exhibition in Asia planned by the museum, it did not stop at simply listing provocative objects that stimulate the eye, but surveyed Hirst's artistic journey of more than 35 years in a three-dimensional and logical structure.
The exhibition consists of four parts, from his early trash-pile object collages to his unreleased latest paintings, unraveling the obsessions of modern society in a sharp visual language. Part 1 confirms his aesthetic roots through early collages and the prototype of his "Spot Paintings," which show the identity of the young Hirst in his early 20s challenging established conventions. In Part 2, which could be called the highlight of this exhibition, the major work "The Shark," publicly shown outside Britain for the first time since the 2012 Tate Modern retrospective, along with "A Thousand Years" and others, delivered both intense visual shock and narrative to visitors simultaneously.
Part 3 exposed the fictiousness of the scientific systems we absolutely believe in, through the "Medicine Cabinets" series, which staged blind faith in modern medicine and the logic of capital like a cathedral altar, and the "Pharmacy" space recreating a restaurant. A triptych recreating medieval stained glass with thousands of butterfly wings, and sculptures of angels and saints surrounding it, made viewers confront the cruel afterimage behind the beauty. The diamond-covered skull was also displayed here under the protection of security guards. The fourth and final part brought London's "River Studio" directly into the exhibition hall, vividly showing the unfinished large-scale painting "River Painting" that the artist had been brushing until moments before, along with his well-worn brushes and the floor.
