Hello Goodbye.

I had Holland Cotter's article from Thursday's Times, The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!, fresh in my mind when I was reading Glenn O'Brien and Fabien Baron's conversational editorial in the last issue of Interview magazine. Can't get any more succinct than this. Just the Beat, please. And the recognition that whatever comes next will probably be a surprise, and not look anything like it did last time.

FB: So I guess this is a good year to have an anniversary, because of the recession.
GO'B: I like recessions. Punk rock started in a recession. Neo-expressionism started in a recession.

In the same issue, behind the door of the "Goodbye to All That." Department I found Damien Hirst interviewing Lily Allen. Like I said, Hello Goodbye.

LA: I’ve been getting into art recently. I don’t know if you knew that.
DH: I heard you bought some paintings by Paul Simonon from the Clash.
LA: Yeah, and I bought a Christian Marclay piece off Jay Jopling [HAA note: What, no mention of the snogging here???].
DH: Really? What did you buy?
LA: This piece called Untitled (Guns N’ Roses and Survival of the Fittest), which is this thing of tapes.
DH: You’re mental! What got you into that? You’ve got more money than sense, buying that rubbish. I bet you like those fucking guys who cut them cows in half and do all that rubbish. That’s not really art! [both laugh]
LA: That’s a good thing to buy, art. Isn’t it? In this day and age? In a recession?
DH: Yes, it is in any time.
LA: You timed your auction quite well, didn’t you?
DH: Yeah, I think I was very lucky.