Damien Hirst, sculptor, painter, curator and animal worrier, has gathered about him like-minded enfants terribles at the Serpentine. Andrew Graham-Dixon ponders the herd instinct
Part chamber of horrors, part cabinet of curiosities, ''Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away'' is Damien Hirst's ideal art exhibition. Its guiding themes are sex and death. There are bodies everywhere.
A notice at the entrance of the Serpentine Gallery cautions that some may find the contents of this show distressing, positively shocking even: a promise disguised as a warning and a surefire guarantee of high attendances. But superfluous, too, since its guest selector, Hirst, needs no assistance when it comes to promotion. The fact that this is his exhibition automatically makes it the biggest draw in town. If you haven't heard of Damien Hirst, virtuoso of dead animals and flies, the man who sold Charles Saatchi a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, the David Hockney of the 1990s (sort of) - well, it can safely be assumed that you went mad or ran away some time ago.
The exhibition opens as quietly and undemonstratively as might have been expected. A rubber hammerhead shark, zipped into a close-fitting leather bodybag, festooned with coconuts and drip-fed by polythene sacs filled with some bright but unnameable green liquid, dangles from the ceiling. A lifesize wax statue of the Virgin Mary, flayed like an anatomical model in medical school, stands bloodily to attention. What looks like an abstract painting in homage to or mockery of an older generation of English artists turns out to be a diagram of a full frontal nude: Julie from Hull, according to the label.
None of these, it transpires, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, are Hirst's. The fetishised shark and the skinned virgin have been imported from New York, where they were created...
