The postmodern baller

What do a leprechaun, a pirate and T-Pain all have in common? They would probably love the shit out of "End of an Era," Damien Hirst's newest exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery. It is, in sum, a temple of ostentation; a dragon's horde, displaced and organized meticulously by someone who loves money almost as much as he loves dead animals.

In the main chamber of the exhibit is a 30-foot-wide, gold-plated case full of 30,000 manufactured diamonds. On each of the adjacent walls, there are several paintings of giant jewels, as perfect and glossy as photographs. In the center: a severed bull's head preserved in formaldehyde. This last item is ordinary by Hirst's standards, except it's been effectively pimped. Sticking out its white, chalky tongue for all eternity, the bull doesn't seem quite aware that it's wearing a crown and its horns are made of gold.

Reportedly one of the richest men in Britain, Hirst is an artistic giant and a limitless provocateur. As you may recall from Writing The Essay, his "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" — shorthand: a shark suspended in formaldehyde — is probably the only piece at the Met that has to be redone every few years because it's rotting flesh. He likes to hang out in an abandoned aircraft hangar with treasure, expensive dead things and God.

So, this being Conceptual art and all, what exactly is he up to with all the shiny stuff? Another room sports some Hirst mainstays: two oversized medicine cabinets stuffed with every pharmaceutical drug imaginable and a fetishistic painting of pills. Presumably, the artist is writing a prescription. He's advocating art as the antidote to capitalism; distilling the poisons we live by into some kind of chemotherapy. The bull is sleepy and angelic, warped by the liquid around it. It affects the surrounding wealth as a center of gravity, placing every bit of sparkle in relation to its own profound grotesqueness. As always, the way Hirst uses the animal reminds us of the way we use animals — viciously and distantly. This time, the process is attended by profit.

Then again, with this exhibit, as with much of his art, you can tiptoe around in the nooks and crannies of Hirst's ideas — you can try to figure out what the "Era" was, and whether this is the "End" of anything besides that bull — but it's hard to get past the reality of the situation. For me, at least, it was hard to get past the impression that I was walking around in a slightly more tasteful version of the "MTV Cribs" parody on "Chappelle's Show" — the one where Dave Chappelle sprinkles diamonds on his T-Rex omelet and shows us his personal sweatshop. That was one of the Lost Episodes, released without Chappelle's permission after he quit the show. I think it's amazing satire, partially because it's hilarious and partially because Chappelle was struggling — really struggling — to wrap his head around a $50 million paycheck when he made it.

You don't see that kind of struggle in Hirst's work. Instead, you see ease: a carefree, whimsical thought process.

"People are terrible. Just look at these diamonds!"

"End of an Era" is on display at the Gagosian Gallery (77th and Madison) until March 6.