The Misunderstood

Damien Hirst

Viewer discretion is advised

Damien Hirst (born 7 June 1965)

•BA Fine Art, Goldsmiths London

•Developed interest in exploring the “unacceptable idea” of death as a teenager.

•From the age of sixteen, he made regular visits to the anatomy department of Leeds Medical School in order to make life drawings. •The experiences served to establish the difficulties he perceived in reconciling the idea of death in life.

“You can frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or it can actually give them vigour.”

Painting

Concept Art

Installation

•Prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists.

•Installations exhibited in Warehouses rather than gallaries

•Turner Prize in 1995.

•Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m.

•Death is a central theme in his works.

•He is famous for a series of Installations in which dead animals are preserved or even sometimes dissected and preserved in formaldehyde.

•Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's raised £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction.

Hirst attraction to formaldehyde is as ‘because it is dangerous and it burns your skin. If you breathe it in it chokes you and it looks like water. I associate it with memory.’ He also says that ‘it is used not for its preservative qualities, but ‘to communicate an idea.’

Field of work

Works

A Thousand Years (1990)

Material: Glass, steel, silicone rubber, painted MDF, Insect-O-Cutor, cow’s head, blood, flies, maggots, metal dishes, cotton wool, sugar and water

Concept: The vitrine is split in half by a glass wall, a hole in this partition allows newly hatched flies from a box in one half, to fly into the other where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs.

This installation is an exploration into the deep profundities of life and death

Our take: This depicts the whole process of Life and Death in a very un-nerving way. It’s striking kind of work which some would not even dare to do.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

Material: Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution

One of the most iconic images of contemporary art

Concept: The intention was to force the viewer out of their element by introducing into a gallery setting, a shark that was “real enough to frighten you”. By isolating the shark from its natural habitat, with the formaldehyde providing an illusion of life, the work explores our greatest fears, and the difficulty involved in adequately trying to express them.

Our take: A lot of controversy was created when this installation was exhibited, some even said that now ‘Art is pickled fish in a big jar’ and it makes you think on some Level that you try and avoid death, but it’s such a big thing that you can’t. That’s the frightening thing isn’t it?

Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything (1996)

Material: Glass, painted steel, silicone, acrylic, plastic cable ties, cows and formaldehyde solution

Concept: The cows “the most slaughtered animals ever”, are used to demonstrate, “an emotional thing which you are dealing with in a very brutal, unemotional way.” the title was just accepting that it is never going to work, on some level, in the words lie the inherent lies, and an expression of the violence inherent, “in any sort of relationship, like trying to keep a relationship together when it is falling apart.”

Our take: Though the whole setup looks like a butchery but it is trying to point to the TRUTHthat things will go wrong inrelationships as long as emotions like angry, greed, lust and egos exist.

The Golden Calf (2008)

Material: Glass, gold, gold plated stainless steel, silicone, calf and formaldehyde solution with Carrara marble plinth

Concept: The work’s title refers to the Exodus account of the Israelites’ idolatrous worship of a Golden Calf during Moses’s absence. As in traditional artistic depictions of the idol, Hirst’s calf is crowned with a sun disc of solid gold, a symbol of pagan deification. Lull has horns and hooves cast in solid 18 carat gold.

Our take: The exhibit feels very minimal and seems to be very grand due to the presence of gold. Though it comprises of a dead animal in a tank but it conveys the whole concept of the bull being worshipped in an effectively.

END