Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is a controversial British artist born in 1965. He is a painter and sculptor,

among other things, and for the past decade has been one of the richest, most famous artists in

the world. He is best known for the “Natural History” works, which are essentially dead animals

floating in formaldehyde. Some of his other more notable styles of work include the so-called

spin paintings (Beautiful Spill of Light in Destitute Blackness Painting, 2005), the spot paintings,

and installations such as My Way, (1990-1991, bottles on a shelf) and a room-sized project called

Pharmacy (1992). He has exhibited artwork made with butterflies, and is noted for shocking the

public by using human skulls. Hirst also has been accused of plagiarizing other artists’ ideas.

One of Hirst’s most famous works is called the Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of

Someone Living (1991), a dead tiger shark floating in preserving fluid. It is part of the series

known collectively as his “Natural History” works that includes fish, sheep, pigs, cows and

calves suspended in formaldehyde. He has said of these works that he wanted “to make people

think, not to totally shock the shit out of them for the sake of it” (Chaundy, “Damien Hirst:

Shockaholic”).

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was displayed at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for three years. It looks like it would be more at

home in the Smithsonian. Or a horror movie. It was commissioned in 1991 by Charles Saatchi,

an art collector and one of Hirst’s biggest promoters. Saatchi sold it 13 years after it was

completed to an American hedge fund manager for $12 million (Lacayo, “Damien Hirst: Bad

Boy Makes Good”).

[pic]

Another type of art that Hirst is known for are his medicine cabinets. In the late 1980’s, he

designed several pieces that were just white wooden shelves with medicine bottles arranged on

them. They don’t really look like “art” at all. In fact, these pieces look like the shelves behind

the local Walgreen’s pharmacy counter. The most famous of this series are the twelve named

after the songs on the 1977 debut album “Never Mind the Bollocks” by the Sex Pistols

(Thornton, In and out of love with Damien Hirst).

[pic]

In 1995, Hirst started making “spin paintings.” These were made by pouring paint on a

revolving surface, much like kids from the 80’s did with their mechanical Spin Art toys.

Actually, exactly like that. These “paintings” are dynamic and colorful, even beautiful—in fact

the first four of Hirst’s works of this type have titles that begin with the word ‘beautiful.’ They

suggest movement, confusion, chaos. One example in particular of this type that catches the

eye is Beautiful Bleeding Wound over the Materialism of Money Painting. It was done with

household gloss paint and a credit card on canvas in 2005. There seems to be a lot of anger in

this painting. One could easily see it hanging over the desk of a financial counselor, with the

title displayed prominently—a bit literal, maybe, but apt.

[pic]

Hirst’s so-called spot paintings are grids of multicolored dots, with the spaces between the

same as the diameter of the dots. The first was painted directly on the wall of a warehouse by

Hirst when he was a student. They are mostly named after pharmaceuticals. He painted only

the first five himself, and is quoted as saying “…fuck this. I hated it. As soon as I sold one, I

used the money to pay people to make them…” (Cohen, Inside Damien Hirst’s factory). The

spot paintings are relentlessly symmetrical and yet make one dizzy. Today there are about 1700

of these spot paintings spread around the world (Thornton, In and out of love with Damien

Hirst).

[pic]

Hirst’s first solo show was “In and Out of Love.” It was a two floor installation made up of

butterflies. On the upper floor, pupae were attached to white paintings and butterflies hatched

during the opening of the show. On the lower floor, dead butterflies were attached to colored

canvases and displayed. These were the first of Hirst’s “butterfly paintings.” (Thornton, In and

out of love with Damien Hirst.) Later, Hirst used the wings only arranged in kaleidoscope

patterns. They also bring to mind stained glass windows or the tile work in a mosque, which

gives an almost religious feel to the works. One of these pieces is among the highest prices

ever got at auction for a Hirst piece: Eternity, 2002-2004. It fetched $7.5 million in 2007.

[pic]

One of the most controversial pieces that Hirst has done is called For the Love of God.

This is a life-sized, platinum, diamond-encrusted skull with the asking price of roughly $80

million. Richard Dorment, writing for the Telegraph, said that if anyone but Hirst had made it,

it would be nothing but vulgar. However, since it was done by Hirst, in the most brutal way

possible For the Love of God questions the morality of art and money (For the love of art and

money, the Telegraph, June 2007). For the Love of God is a grinning, shiny, cheap-looking

work, in spite of having been made of the materials of wealth and power. One gets a sense that

Hirst is laughing at us all when looking at this piece, in more ways than one.

[pic]

Perhaps he is laughing at us all, if the claims levied over the years of Hirst copying others’

works is to be believed. Imagine making a boat-load of cash without having ever had a single

original idea? Nice work if you can get it. Hirst himself is quoted in The Art Damien Hirst

Stole by Charles Thomson as saying that there isn’t any shame in stealing other people’s ideas-

you call it a tribute. Here are some of the more blatant examples:

The “spot” paintings. Thomas Downing, an American, painted grids of spots in random

colors in the 1960s. Hirst painted remarkably similar works beginning in 1988:

[pic]

The pharmacy works. An artist named Joseph Cornell showed a cabinet with bottles on

shelves called Pharmacy in 1943. Hirst began quite similar works in 1989, and actually had a

room-sized installation called Pharmacy in 1992 (Thomson, The Art Damien Hirst Stole).

[pic]

The shark. Even his (arguably) most famous work, The Physical Impossibility of Death in

the Mind of Someone Living appears to have been a “tribute” to someone else’s work…Eddie

Saunders exhibited a preserved shark in a tank in Charles Saatchi’s art gallery in 1991

(Thomson, The Art Damien Hirst Stole).

[pic]

Butterfly works. In 1992, and artist named Lori Precious used butterfly wings in her works

to create stained glass patterns. Hirst was using whole butterflies beginning in 1991…it wasn’t

until 2003 that Hirst began using the wings only (Thomson, The Art Damien Hirst Stole).

[pic]

The spin paintings. There are many examples of spin paintings before Hirst started doing

them, some as early as the 1950s. There was actually a child’s toy in the 1980s that used the

same concept: pouring paint on a rotating surface. An artist named Walter Robinson exhibited

many of these types of paintings in the 1980s (Thomson, The Art Damien Hirst Stole).

[pic]

The skull. Lastly, there is the infamous skull. John LeKay, a friend and colleague of Hirst,

made a series of 25 skulls beginning in 1993 (Hirst and LeKay met in 1992). One in particular

was covered in Swarovski crystals, and called Spiritus Callidus (a name for the devil). Hirst

called his For the Love of God (Thomson, The Art Damien Hirst Stole). Tribute, indeed.

[pic]

Damien Hirst is the art world’s equivalent of a shock jock. One gets the feeling from his

body of work as a whole that what he produces makes fun of art collectors and other artists alike.

He has others do the work for him when he can, and then asks outrageous sums of money for

the results. And then laughs all the way to the bank.

[pic]

Works Cited

Chaundy, Bob. “Damien Hirst: Shockaholic.” BBC News, World Edition Sep. 20, 2002.

Dorment, Richard. “For the Love of Art and Money.” The Telegraph June 1, 2007.

Lacayo, Richard. “Damien Hirst: Bad Boy Makes Good.” Time Sep. 4, 2008.

Thomson, Charles. “The Art Damien Hirst Stole.” 3AMMagazine.com

Thornton, Sarah. “In and Out of Love with Damien Hirst.” The Art Newspaper October 2008.