Oh dear, the gloves are off. Damien Hirst has a new exhibit of paintings.

(A screenshot of the Guardian's online slideshow for Hirst's paintings) Yes, actual paintings. Even more shocking, it’s not just his “Here’s your paycheck, Employee No. 3,745. Now go and follow my design” dot paintings. He actually painted the darn things himself. Critics haven’t been exactly kind. The Guardian’s Adrian Searle has called it “positively amateurish.” Elsewhere, other adjectives include “boring”, “derivative” and “weak”. Personally, they seem pretty okay. But then again, I’m just looking at photographs on the web. But what I found more interesting is all the attention the show, No Love Lost, has been getting. And all that scrutiny, I suspect, revolves partly around the same question. Is Damien Hirst really an artist, like, for real? Pickled sharks and diamond encrusted skulls ey? How about you try doing something with a paintbrush? Without your minions? What? You used to go to art school? Oh, we've conveniently forgotten about that. Mwahahaha! Yet again, the spectre of the Authentic Artist rears its ugly head. In this case, its Francis Bacon-ish ugly head. The idea of authenticity, the infallible relation between the creator and the created, the genuine -- it's somewhat related to a recent article by a fellow arts reporter from another newspaper. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s about audience’s reactions to the play These Children Are Dead, which revolved around the works of a “fake” artist named Huang Wei. The catch, as every knows by now, is that the paintings were done by the alive-and-kicking Salon Projects honcho Alan Oei. The entire thing was made up. Some words that were bandied around in the newspaper article: “hoax”, “betrayed”, “gullible”, and of course, “lie”. Personally, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a lie. If you want to pick bones, they simply weren’t telling the entire truth. Now here's the thing. Does one’s awareness of the “catch” before or after the play really matter? Would not knowing matter at all? On both counts, yes of course. But here's where I part ways with the audiences quoted in the article. It’s intriguing how the respondents seemed to take the revelation in a negative light. That they’ve been had or that they’d wish they’d never known the truth or worse, they were so angry they wanted to hit the actor – according to Nora Samosir. As if creating a make-believe world and bursting the bubble constituted an act of violence against their very being. As a journo, I was privy to the whole thing. Like I’ve been privy to other local artists who’ve done or are doing the same thing. Like this group of artists who recently did an exhibit under “other” people’s names. Or this visual artist who uses a gadget more high-tech than a paintbrush and seems to hang around other people who work in a different field. Or well, Alan Oei. (Sorry, bro, the public already knows. But, I dont' know, keeping this going even though everyone already knows also sounds intriguing...) Some might say it’s a naïve way of approaching the situation. Others may point out that by keeping it to myself, I’m going against the journo ethic of laying out all the facts. Worse, they may point out that I'm looking like a complete retard who wasn’t in the know. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to spoil the experience for someone who didn't know. Someone who, for some strange reason, may happen to stumble across this blog post. Because unlike the folks quoted in the article, I actually like being “had”. At least in the realm of art. I think of it as an added layer to my whole experience. And yes, I’ve been seriously “had” by artists at least once. Authenticity? Keeping it real? The truth? Sometimes these things can be overrated. It's true.