ABOVE: Damien Hirst’s Away from the Flock (1994), on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston until April 24

Damien Hirst often seems too popular to be good—’popular’ in the true sense of the word, as in “Of, representing, or carried on by the people at large.” It’s elitist, sure, but come on, this is contemporary art we’re talking about here.

Hirst’s work seems unsubtle, too easy to read, shocking but not challenging. Something you’d find 150 words about on the “Oddly Enough” page of USA Today, so that the regulars at Dunkin’ Donuts can pass it around and shake their heads at that British weirdo who preserves lambs in formaldehyde. The kind of artist your cabdriver has an opinion on.

This New York Times review of the Hirst show currently showing at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston does not entirely change our minds, but it does nicely define the Prankster/Philosopher dichotomy that so much Hirst criticism oscillates between. It also gets points for an indirect zinger in which it calls Hirst “a third-rate Warhol, a second-rate Koons,” thereby managing to insult Hirst and Koons simultaneously.

What did interest us was this blog entry about seeing The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (also known as “The Shark”) up close, an experience we have not had. The writer makes it sound genuinely compelling to see; but it sounds like the show in Boston, as some of the responses indicate, doesn’t quite live up to it.

New York Times > Art Review > Varied Phases of Damien Hirst (Sliced-Up Cow Not Included)