Installation view: “Views of Vexation of Spirit – the Duerckheim Collection x Serralves” at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. Photo © Serralves Foundation

It’s difficult to remember the era of “Cool Britannia” as we observe the country’s steep decline. A British accent will always go a long way with people attracted to men, but there was a period in the 1990s when it could have been argued that the U.K. occupied the avant-garde of music, fashion, film and visual art. “London Swings Again,” proclaimed the cover of a 1997 issue of Vanity Fair. Last month a cover story in the Atlantic explained “How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi.”

But the big names of turn-of-century Britain stand out in “Vexation of Spirit – The Duerckheim Collection x Serralves,” a major new exhibition at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. The show features 90 works by 34 artists, drawn from the collection Christian Count Duerckheim has assembled over four decades. The industrialist has a clear interest in German painting, mixed with sterling examples of work by artists on White Cube’s roster. I had a chance to see this show in person, and walking through the intriguing architecture of Serralves felt like a trip through the sui generis mind of the count, with sterling offerings from Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George, Antony Gormley, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Theaster Gates.

The star of the show is The End of Fun (2010) by the Chapman brothers, described to me by the count as “a Guernica (1937) for the 21st Century.” Seen from above, this installation of nine vitrines would take the shape of a swastika, but that’s far from its most offensive element. Inside, these giant glass boxes contain hundreds of scenes of Nazi-era carnage, all created with figurines made for the scale of a train set. Still, I doubt even the most obscure hobbyist store would have one that features zombies, or Ronald McDonald being crucified. Like a video game or a horror movie, the gore is so extreme that you have to laugh, and the humor is intentional. On one vista, a group of Adolf Hitlers explore their love of painting. All offer a take on a nude life model, who, like them, is oblivious to the destruction around her.

That installation marks the end of the show, which begins with a work also for strong stomachs, Hirst’s Father (Divided) (2011–12). This Luing bull in sky-blue formaldehyde has an advantage over other Hirst animal works in that he’s been sliced down the middle, on a vertical axis, so you can walk inside. Hirst never met his biological father, but what about the bigger animal? Luing is the first entirely new British cattle breed in over a century, recognized by the British government in 1965. Inbred and purpose-built, its useless guts reflect Hirst’s fatherland.

Midway through the show sits Kiefer’s Dat Rosa Miel Apibus (2010-11), an epic oil-on-canvas piece the size of a room that incorporates terracotta, salt and lead. The work’s title refers to the Rosicrucian motto “the rose gives honey to the bees.” It’s a colorful phrase for a depiction of a giant grey warehouse with sunflowers of real iron. In the absence of hope, the Duerckheim Collection shows how to find beauty in desolation.

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