Beheaded Sheep Go On Show

Let others count turtledoves and French hens this yuletide season. Damien Hirst is counting sheep -- 30, to be exact, all of them dead.

Beheaded, preserved in formaldehyde and sealed in glass tanks placed on rows of stainless-steel autopsy tables, the wooly slaughter represents Hirst's most vapid foray into mortality yet.

Titled ``School: The Archeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity, and the Search for Knowledge,'' his installation in the lobby of New York's Lever House is also a display of corporate ego that mars the most serenely designed, glass-walled skyscraper in town.

A joint commission from Aby Rosen, the Manhattan property developer and art collector who owns Lever House, and Alberto Mugrabi, an art dealer, ``School'' emits an oddly seductive yellow-green glow from fluorescent tubes mounted on each table.

Branded with a butcher's stamp that says ``Hirst,'' the carcasses are not the only students in this demented classroom. Suspended in a front-row tank sits Hirst's star pupil: a small, bloody shark, seemingly abandoned during an examination.

At the back, two sides of beef chained by fat sausage links hang from the top of a 12-foot-tall, formaldehyde-filled, glass cabinet containing a leather armchair, an open black umbrella and a white dove with its wings spread.

The umbrella may be reminiscent of surreal paintings by Magritte, the beef familiar from Rembrandt, but the dove makes the scene pure ``Silence of the Lambs.'' The installation certainly cost as much as some movies: $10 million.

If the $100 million diamond skull that Hirst showed off last summer didn't prove him the Prince of Excess, this bloated display of butchery surely will.

All the same, not many artists expose the machinations of the art market as indelibly, or as contemptuously, as Hirst, who continues to test public tolerance for private gluttony with undeniable panache.

Fiberglass Dress

Now, thanks to shoemaker Manolo Blahnik, Hirst has become part of couture history via ``blog.mode: addressing fashion,'' the techno-smart exhibition from the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Blahnik, who sponsored the show, adapted a polka-dot pattern painting by Hirst for a low-heeled, white canvas boot with pink leather lining that is featured in the display. Compared to an ivory puff pastry of an evening gown by Alexander McQueen made of a thousand petals of organza, or a flesh-colored fiberglass dress by Hussein Chalayan with remote-controlled side and back flaps, the Blahnik/Hirst boot is the least subversive piece on view.

Bondage Outfit

The contents of this very entertaining survey -- a two- century sweep of outrageous evening wear recently added to the institute's permanent collection -- are not what makes it revolutionary, at least for the Met.

This show is here to lift the museum into the blogosphere.

Curator Harold Koda believes museum-goers are too intimidated by masterpieces to discuss them out loud. But who, in this age of ``Project Runway,'' is too shy to comment publicly on vintage clothes?

Not when they include a dress suit by Miguel Adrover made from a tattered mattress; a punk-rock bondage costume by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren; a yellow evening coat by Yves Saint Laurent grand enough to be both curtain and stage; or a House of Worth gown with three interchangeable bodices (for dinner, dancing, or court).