Pamela Ferreira
Mr. Gallagher
English 12 CP Period 6
5, April 2010
Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst is an English artist who is considered the richest artist in contemporary art. Damien was born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father, who was a salesman of sorts, left the family when he was 12 so Hirst never got to meet his dad or see him much. He grew up with his mother, Mary Brennan who took care of him after he left but lost control of him from early on (Star par 1). Damien did pretty much whatever he wanted, although, he was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting. For college, Damien went to Goldsmith College in London to study art and its surprising to see that he wasn’t inspired by another artist, he was inspired by the former ad tycoon Charles Saatchi who he ended up working with from as early as 1985 when Charles established a gallery in 1985 to show his collection of art and some of Damien’s (Star par. 1).
During his college years, Damien was a rebel, in a way, he loves to drink, party, smoke, and gamble a lot, that was one of the problems between him and Charles Saatchi, Charles begged him many times to stop and he and Damien often got into heated arguments, which resulted in the partnership ending in 2003 (Johnson par. 2). Damien eventually stopped partying so heavily and got frustrated when some people were “accusing” him of not doing his work because he was always so busy socializing and partying, but he actually managed to get most of his work done (Fillmore par. 2).
In 1991, Damien decided to get the media’s attention with his self-organized London show, “In and Out of Love.” It featured rooms filled with hundreds of live butterflies hatching, flying, dying, and some other dead specimens attached to canvases (Holmes par. 1). At this point in his life, he became obsessed with the dead animal art and started making art that would be considered a little strange. In 1996, he had his “big mess” where he made a shark in a tank of formaldehyde and set it up on display, people from all around that saw that did not understand what he was doing, and they didn’t like it, they stopped showing up to his openings because all he had was dead animals all around and the people felt sick because of it, Damien then stopped and started making different art, and slowly people started coming again.
In 1995, Damien Hirst was the winner of the Turner Prize and is one of the so called Young British Artists who became an international art world celebrity after the advertising magnate Charles Saatchi relentlessly promoted them (Star par. 2). After that, his fame pretty much grew and he experimented with many different kinds of art, he switched from dead animal to paintings and canvases, he used themes of art, science, and religion in his paintings to show the contemporary society for its materialism and vanity (Feeht par. 1).
Damien Hirst has changed his art every year, causing a sensation in the summer of 2007, where thousands of people where lined up outside the White Cube Gallery waiting to glimpse a human skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds which cost probably about 23.5 million to make (Shaw par. 2). It was recorded that his diamond skull would be the most expensive art he could own or it was just a skull covered in “bling”. Damien still uses death related themes in his art and he showed it with his skull, he thinks about it as laughing in the face of death and showing no fear because eventually, everyone dies (Shaw par. 3).
Damien Hirst made many different pieces of art in his time, he went from dead animal art to oil canvases and creating things like his famous diamond skull that called attention from people all around the art world, his pieces are put into three categories, the dead animal art, the paintings, and the canvases, three of them are most interesting to mention like his dead shark in a formaldehyde tank, his “Requiem II” painting, and his most famous one of all, his diamond skull, each of these took a while to make also, but he has played around with different types of works which will be shown here.
Damien Hirst’s diamond skull was made by studio assistants and Damien Hirst himself, it is cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds. The gallery had said that the artwork cost 23.5 million to make (Vogel par. 1). He didn’t want to make the skull at first because of how much it would cost to make, he says, “Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it” (Shaw par. 4). Hirst’s skull has become the single most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created. He shows that he thinks that death is not scary, yes, it’s a heavy subject but it’s not something that should be always feared because eventually, everyone dies so, there is no point in fearing it.
The diamond skull Damien Hirst made was put on a collage to sell on the internet by an entrepreneurial 16 year old who wanted to sell it off for money, Damien Hirst was angry at the boy and threatened to sue him if he didn’t take it off, Hirst reported the teenager, who styled himself as Cartrain, to the Design and Artists Copyright Society who ordered the boy to hand over his £200 profit back to Hirst, because of the collage he made with Hirst’s diamond skull, the boy who is unnamed, basically provoked one of the most powerful and richest artists alive (Akbar par. 2).
Hirst’s painting of his Requiem II, “White Roses and Butterflies,” was a bit of a shock to the people who were so used to seeing something death related, this painting however, was not death related, it was more of a reminder of something peaceful, his use of the color white in his roses and butterflies and the lines are a symbol of peace and tranquility and romance, the complete opposite of death. His butterflies, he shows as us people who fly around and go through every day the same way without really changing our ways, and his transparent lines serves as the memory that is being brought and spread about like thread, like a cat playing with a ball of yarn.
Hirst possesses that supremely uncritical attribute, talent. The apparent “unoriginality” of his work, its reliance on surrealistic shock techniques and minimum presentational models doesn’t detract from his brilliance as a Pop personage, or in other words, a vendor of attributes. His work with the roses and the butterflies is a change for him and a shock because who would have thought that this artist would change his topic even thought it didn’t last long; he soon went back to his death related theme.
His final piece is his dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde. It took awhile to make considering his process regarding the animal. For Damien Hirst, it was a real delicate thing to do this, it required rubberized protective jumpsuits, long tables of medical equipment and more than 224 gallons of formaldehyde (that’s a lot), his goal was to replace a decaying tiger shark that floats in one of his famous pieces of Conceptual art called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” This shark had three different lengths of needles used to inject the shark with the formaldehyde (Vogel par. 3), he injected the dead animal twice each time penetrating deeper into the shark’s body cavity, the original shark was normally a 14 footer that was caught and killed in Australia at Mr. Hirst’s behest in 1991, it was first unveiled to the public in its glass tank the following year at the Saatchi Gallery in London, it quickly became a symbol of the shock tactics common to the circle as the Young British Artists.
Since Hirst made his art, there were not that many people buying his dead shark in the tank or many other because they were a little grotesque and disturbing, yet he managed to create a piece where dead rotting cows are positioned to stimulate copulation, and when the auction came along, not that many people were interested takers so, Mr. Saatchi decided to help like he’s done in the past with other artists whose pieces he collected, if people didn’t purchase Hirst’s art, he would have a serious risk of his art being drastically deflated.
This last painting of his is of a skull in space and it is untitled but also has his death related theme in it, his use of dark blue show the night sky and the stool or table with drawing utensils on it probably means that the person is done with whatever they are doing. His use of white dots show that in a way, it’s like connecting the dots or rather, showing the planets and the stars around it and the skull in the background just sitting there with its mouth open the way they are could be seen as time moves on even though someone has died or something has passed.
Out of all his pieces, his piece with the skull in space compared to other art of his that involves death in gruesome detail or some detail was actually well liked because it was a canvas oil painting and it intrigued the people as did his many other pieces, but this one actually doesn’t scare or rather, it is not disturbing as some of his dead animal art, that is, is very disturbing and made with provocative detail to emphasize the death related theme he uses in not just this painting but in his other works as well, some show his theme better while others don’t really show the theme, it’s just random.
His art has shown people that he does not care what people think of him even though it seems that he does think that every once in awhile and feels frustrated when people think he doesn’t do any work when he does, he shows surprise when he is being interviewed because he is not used to interviewing he says the whole thing still feels very new to him but he does quite enjoy it although he does feel annoyed sometimes at his own fans because they follow him around too much.
In September of 2009, Damien Hirst had an interview, but it wasn’t just him, it was also Prince and Murakami, and they were all talking about how their art has impacted the lives of people all around Europe, what Hirst doesn’t seem to realize is that his talk with these two important people could add to his bank account, which reportedly is larger than any living artist (Esterow sec. 2). The first volume of Hirst’s Requiem I, includes his art from when he was a college student and they have been worth quite a lot until now, if not more.
The second volume of the catalogue, which is Hirst’s Requiem II, is devoted to Hirst’s skull paintings, normally Hirst would have asked one of the people to work with him to do this piece, but the skull paintings were not produced by assistants but, for the first time, were the results of solitary studio practice which means Hirst spent some time working on this piece and shaping it as amazingly adorned a work of art can be and saying that death is something that people can laugh at instead of fearing it.
Damien Hirst has also purchased art for his own hobby and he likes to collect other pieces of art to decorate his house in England. One particular piece he bought named, “Perceval”, he bought it shortly after it was made by Ms. Amy Lucas, he bought it from her London dealer, shortly after, he sent an email to Ms. Lucas that he bought that particular piece because he thought it “romantic” and he admired the bronze color of the work (Feeht par. 2).
For Hirst, who used to work with dead animal art like his shark and everything concludes that all his art id death related (well, not all of them), he felt influenced to create a diamond skull that was cast from an 18th century skull he bought in London, and he was also influenced by a Mexican skulls that he bought and was encrusted in turquoise (Vogel par 3). Hirst is interested in sending the public mixed messages, and some of his things are very vague, and he readily admits as in the case of many artists working today, while his hands are involved in every painting for how. Some of his assistants, most of whom were trained artists to do some of the paintings for him.
Damien Hirst’s first painting was of crystals and it was based on a postcard from the National History Museum, none of his images are taken from newspaper and magazines, throwaway that. Hirst decided relentlessly Hirst’s said, that in a way, all painting is sculpture. Besides Hirst’s mess in 1996 with his whole dead shark in window act, one can truly say that he has changed for the better and is now open to try and do different kinds of art, not that there is anything wrong with the art, but when the artist gets an idea or makes an art and the crowd doesn’t like it, it helps him grow and his art grows as well, like the two of them are one in unity and meaning because painting comes from what is being felt and how to get it down either on paper, drawing classes, or just painting in general.
As an artist, Damien has done many things but besides being an artist, he is also a curator, since he sometimes manages his art, a collector, he collects art from other artists and purchases his own art, an entrepreneur, he goes around showing his art off to anyone willing to take a look at it, a restaurateur, he used to work in one, and funny of all, he is a clothing designer, apparently he has many hidden talents under the whole “artist” look and he is not afraid to say that he is all of that; although it seems that he hasn’t shown much except the artistic side of himself, probably because he feels more comfortable in expressing himself in this way than in any other way.
Some of his art, however, have a sense of social foreclosure, of a predetermined gloom and doom that sucks the life out of lives no less certainly than the depredations of age and disease, meaning that his dead animal art sucks the life out of things and give them a gloomy and dark feel, as if saying that there is no point to life but to die and life is worth nothing unless something gruesome is there to be seen in it, and that if age problems and diseases are bad then this is worse, it seems like he is mocking people’s suffering saying that there are worse things in life than that.
Since his early works from the 80s and early 90s were produced, it’s obvious that their value has increased very much than its price back in his day, they have increased twentyfold since one of his early dot paintings sold for $20,000 at an auction. In conclusion, Damien Hirst is one of the most famous “Young British Artist” of his time and is considered the richest also, his art is truly something amazing, phenomenal, intriguing, unique way of making this sort of art.
Works Cited
Akbar, Arifka. “God save the Damien Hirst rip-off industry!” The Independent Art. February 2009.
Dannat, Adrian. Life’s Like This Then It Stops.” Flashart Magazine. October, 2007.
Esterow, Milton. “Confessions of Hirst, Prince, and Murakami.” ARTNews. September 2009: 104-106.
Feeht, Tom. “Damien Hirst.” The New York Times. March 18, 2010.
Holmes Pernillia. “Damien Hirst.” ARTNews. October 2007.
Johnson, Ken. “Various Phases of Damien Hirst.” The New York Times. February 18, 2005.
Lacayo, Richard. “Bad Boy Makes Good.” Times Magazine. September 4, 2008.
Rimanelli, David. “Damien Hirst- Brief Article” ARTForum. December 2000.
Star, Vegetarian. “Morrissey Interview Magazine.” March 18, 2010.
Shaw, William. “The Iceman Cometh” The New York Times. June 3, 2007.
Vogel, Carol. “The Devastating Impact of Crack Cocaine.” The New York Times. March 14, 2005.
Vogel, Carol. “Damien Hirst Makes A Strategic Purchase: His Own Work” The New York Times. November 27, 2003.
Vogel, Carol. “Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks.” ARTNews Magazine. October 1, 2006.
Works Consulted
Vogel, Carol. “Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks.” ARTNews Magazine. October 1, 2006.
Vogel, Carol. “Damien Hirst Makes A Strategic Purchase: His Own Work” The New York Times. November 27, 2003.
Shaw, William. “The Iceman Cometh” The New York Times. June 3, 2007.
Star, Vegetarian. “Morrissey Interview Magazine.” March 18, 2010.
Johnson, Ken. “Various Phases of Damien Hirst.” The New York Times. February 18, 2005.
Holmes Pernillia. “Damien Hirst.” ARTNews. October 2007.
Feeht, Tom. “Damien Hirst.” The New York Times. March 18, 2010.
Esterow, Milton. “Confessions of Hirst, Prince, and Murakami.” ARTNews. September 2009: 104-106.
Akbar, Arifka. “God save the Damien Hirst rip-off industry!” The Independent Art. February 2009.
