“What does Damien Hirst have to do with McDonald’s? Nothing.” So begins a perplexing Instagram video introducing an installation organized by Nicolas Ballario, founder of a Milan-based communications agency, that was on view as part of Milan Design Week.
The immersive installation, “POOL. Ti sblocco un ricordo” (“Pool: I’ll Unlock a Memory for You”), is part of a series of offsite exhibitions collectively called Tortona Rocks, in the Tortona neighborhood of Milan. The centerpiece of “POOL” is a large swimming pool-shaped pit full of hundreds of thousands of colorful balls, like a McDonald’s PlayPlace ball pit on steroids.
So, what does the provocative British artist have to do with all of this? Ballario’s video is unclear, explaining that Hirst’s relevance to the project, which is intended to celebrate McDonald’s 40th anniversary in Italy, is, in fact, irrelevant. “Art is compelling when it is ambiguous, when it is disorienting and fills you with doubt,” he says. Okay, then!
According to McDonald’s, the massive ball pit was “informed by” Hirst’s well-known “Spot Paintings,” of which he completed hundreds, beginning in 1986. In 2012, over 300 of these paintings were on view at 11 Gagosian gallery locations around the world. (Anyone who proved that they visited all 11 galleries won a personalized and signed spot print.)
On an illuminated wall near the foot of the pool is another Hirst-inspired artwork, this one from the series “Early Works” by Vedovamazzei. In this project, the longtime Italian duo creates paintings that imagine how famous artists might have drawn as children. So here we see a faux-youthful work by Hirst, made up of colorful oblong splotches on white paper. (Other artists that got the Vedovamazzei treatment include Giotto, Andy Warhol, David Hammons, and Rembrandt.)
The rest of the installation is more obviously pegged to the McDonald’s anniversary. There are vitrines filled with Happy Meal toys, a Ronald McDonald replica sitting on a bench (not floating in a Formaldehyde-filled tank, I’ll point out), and various other nostalgic McDonald’s-related ephemera and memorabilia.
The first McDonald’s opened in Italy on March 20, 1986, in Rome near the Spanish Steps; at the time it was the biggest in the world, with seating for 450 diners. It was not welcomed with open arms, to say the least: the fashion designer Valentino was just one local to vehemently protest the “significant and constant noise and an unbearable smell of fried food fouling the air.” According to McDonald’s, there are now 720 franchises in Italy.