The art of Kevin Blythe Sampson

THE ART OF
KEVIN BLYTHE SAMPSON

9/6/09

Damien Hirst

 


Damien Hirst

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born
7 June 1965 (1965-06-07) (aged 44)
Bristol, England

Nationality
British

Field
Conceptual art, installation art, painting

Training
Leeds College of Art and Design, Goldsmiths

Movement
Young British Artists

Works
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, For the Love of God

Patrons
Charles Saatchi

Awards
Turner Prize

Damien Steven Hirst[1] (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and the most prominent[2] member of the group known as "Young British Artists" (or YBAs) and is reputed to be the richest living artist to date.[3] Hirst dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s and is internationally renowned. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,[4] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.[5] Its sale in 2004 made him the world's second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns whom he surpassed in 2008.

In June 2007, Hirst overtook Jasper Johns when his Lullaby Spring sold for £9.65 million at Sotheby's in London.[6] On 30 August 2007, Hirst outdid his previous sale of Lullaby Spring with For The Love of God which sold for £50 million to an unknown investment group. [7] He is also known for "spin paintings," made on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings," which are rows of randomly-colored circles.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist[8] by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.[9] The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction[10] as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.[9]

Contents

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Life and career

Early life

Hirst studied at Goldsmiths, University of London

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father was a motor mechanic, who left the family when Hirst was 12.[11] His mother, Mary, was a lapsed Catholic, who worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau and says she lost control of him when he was young.[11] He was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting.[11] However, Hirst sees her as someone who would not tolerate rebellion: she cut up his bondage trousers and heated one of his Sex Pistols vinyl records on the cooker to turn it into a fruit bowl. He says, "If she didn't like how I was dressed, she would quickly take me away from the bus stop." She did, though, encourage his liking for drawing, which was his only successful educational subject.[12]

His art teacher "pleaded"[12] for Hirst to be allowed to enter the sixth form,[12] where he took two A-levels, achieving an "E" grade in art.[11] He was refused admission to Leeds College of Art and Design, when he first applied, but attended the college after a subsequent successful application.[11]

Michael Craig-Martin. An Oak Tree, 1973

He went to an exhibition of work by Francis Davison, staged by Julian Spalding at the Hayward Gallery in 1983.[13] Davison created abstract collages from torn and cut coloured paper, which Hirst said, "blew me away", and which he modelled his own work on for the next two years.[13]

He worked for two years on London building sites, then studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London[11] (1986–89), although again he was refused a place the first time he applied. In 2007, Hirst was quoted as saying of An Oak Tree by Goldsmiths' senior tutor, Michael Craig-Martin: "That piece is, I think, the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture. I still can't get it out of my head."[14] While a student, Hirst had a placement at a mortuary, an experience that influenced his later themes and materials.

Breakthrough

In July 1988 in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and (Sir) Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of his Goldsmiths' lecturer Michael Craig-Martin. Hirst's own contribution to the show consisted of a cluster of cardboard boxes painted with household paint.[15] After graduating, Hirst was included in New Contemporaries show and in a group show at Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.

In 1990 Hirst, along with his friend Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman, curated two enterprising "warehouse" shows, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former Peek Freans biscuit factory they designated "Building One".[16][17] Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head.[18] They also staged Michael Landy's Market.[17] At this time, Hirst said, "I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."[13]

In 1991 his first solo exhibition, organised by Tamara Chodzko - Dial, In and Out of Love, was held in an unused shop on Woodstock Street in central London; he also had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition Broken English, in part curated by Hirst. At this time Hirst met the up-and-coming art dealer, Jay Jopling, who then represented him.

Charles Saatchi

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

In 1991, Charles Saatchi had offered to fund whatever artwork Hirst wanted to make, and the result was showcased in 1992 in the first Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in North London. Hirst's work was titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and was a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine. It cost Saatchi £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000.[19] It became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,[4] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.[5] The exhibition also included A Thousand Years. As a result of the show, Hirst was nominated for that year's Turner Prize, but it was awarded to Grenville Davey.

In 1993, Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale with the work, Mother and Child Divided, a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines. He curated the show Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he exhibited Away from the Flock (a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde). On 9 May, Mark Bridger, a 35 year old artist from Oxford, walked in to the gallery and poured black ink into the tank, and retitled the work Black Sheep. He was subsequently prosecuted, at Hirst's wish, and was given two years' probation. The sculpture was restored at a cost of £1,000.

In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize. New York public health officials banned Two Fucking and Two Watching featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors". There were solo shows in Seoul, London and Salzburg. He directed the video for the song "Country House" for the band Blur. No Sense of Absolute Corruption, his first solo show in the Gagosian Gallery in New York was staged the following year. In London the short film, Hanging Around, was shown—written and directed by Hirst and starring Eddie Izzard. In 1997 the Sensation exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. A Thousand Years and other works by Hirst were included, but the main controversy occurred over other artists' works. It was nevertheless seen as the formal acceptance of the YBAs into the establishment.[20]

Beautiful revolving sphincter, oops brown painting by Damien Hirst (2003)

In 1998, his autobiography and art book, I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, was published. With Alex James of the band Blur and actor Keith Allen, he formed the band Fat Les, achieving a number 2 hit with a raucous football-themed song Vindaloo, followed up by Jerusalem with the London Gay Men's Chorus. Hirst also painted a simple colour pattern for the Beagle 2 probe. This pattern was to be used to calibrate the probe's cameras after it had landed on Mars. He turned down the British Council's invitation to be Britain's representative at the 1999 Venice Biennale because "it didn't feel right".[21] He sued British Airways claiming a breach of copyright over an advert design with coloured spots for its low budget airline, Go.

In 2000, Hirst's sculpture Hymn (which Saatchi had bought for a reported £1m) was given pole position at the show Ant Noises (an anagram of "sensation") in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was then sued himself for breach of copyright over this sculpture (see Appropriation below).[22] Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first.[23] In September 2000, in New York, Larry Gagosian held the Hirst show, Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. 100,000 people visited the show in 12 weeks and all the work was sold.

On 10 September 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, Hirst said in an interview with BBC News Online:

"The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of like an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually... You've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they kind of need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing."[24]

The next week, following public outrage at his remarks, he issued a statement through his company, Science Ltd:

"I apologise unreservedly for any upset I have caused, particularly to the families of the victims of the events on that terrible day."[25]

In 2002 Hirst gave up smoking and drinking, although the short-term result was that his wife Maia "had to move out because I was so horrible." He had met Joe Strummer (former lead singer of The Clash) at Glastonbury in 1995, becoming good friends and going on annual family holidays with him. Just before Christmas 2002, Strummer died of a heart attack. This had a profound effect on Hirst, who said, "It was the first time I felt mortal." He subsequently devoted a lot of time to founding a charity, Strummerville, to help young musicians.[12]

In April 2003, the Saatchi Gallery opened at new premises in County Hall, London, with a show that included a Hirst retrospective. This brought a developing strain in his relationship with Saatchi to a head[26] (one source of contention had been who was most responsible for boosting their mutual profile). Hirst disassociated himself from the retrospective to the extent of not including it in his CV.[26] He was angry that a Mini car that he had decorated for charity with his trademark spots was being exhibited as a serious artwork.[26] The show also scuppered a prospective Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern.[26] He said Saatchi was "childish"[12] and "I'm not Charles Saatchi's barrel-organ monkey ... He only recognises art with his wallet ... he believes he can affect art values with buying power, and he still believes he can do it."[26]

In September 2003 he had an exhibition Romance in the Age of Uncertainty at Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery in London, which made him a reported £11m,[12] bringing his wealth to over £35m. It was reported that a sculpture, Charity, had been sold for £1.5m to a Korean, Kim Chang-Il, who intended to exhibit it in his department store's gallery in Seoul.[27] The 22 foot (6.7m) 6 ton sculpture was based on the 1960s Spastic Society's model, which is of a girl in leg irons holding a collecting box. In Hirst's version the collecting box is shown broken open and is empty.

Charity was exhibited in the centre of Hoxton Square, in front of the White Cube. Inside the gallery downstairs were 12 vitrines representing Jesus's disciples, each case containing mostly gruesome, often blood-stained, items relevant to the particular disciple. At the end was an empty vitrine, representing Christ. Upstairs were four small glass cases, each containing a cow's head stuck with scissors and knives. It has been described as an "extraordinarily spiritual experience" in the tradition of Catholic imagery.[28] At this time Hirst bought back 12 works from Saatchi (a third of Saatchi's holdings of Hirst's early works), via Jay Jopling, for a total fee reported to exceed £8 million. Hirst had sold these pieces to Saatchi in the early 1990s for a considerably smaller sum, his first installations costing less than £10,000.[26]

Post-Saatchi

Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst

On 24 May 2004, a fire in the Momart storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including 17 of Hirst's, although the sculpture Charity survived, as it was outside in the builder's yard.

In July 2004 Hirst commented about Saatchi, "I respect Charles. There's not really a feud. If I see him, we speak, but we were never really drinking buddies."[12]

In late 2004, Hirst designed a cover for the Band Aid 20 charity single featuring the "Grim Reaper" with an African child perched on his knee. This was not to the liking of the record company executives and was replaced by reindeer in the snow standing next to a child.

In December 2004, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen, for $12 million (£6.5 million), in a deal negotiated by Hirst's New York agent, Gagosian.[29] Cohen, a Greenwich hedge fund manager, then donated the work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Sir Nicholas Serota had wanted to acquire it for the Tate Gallery, and Hugo Swire, Shadow Minister for the Arts, tabled a question to ask if the government would ensure it stayed in the country.[30] Current export regulations do not apply to living artists.

In March 2005, Hirst exhibited 30 paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. These had taken 3 1/2 years to complete. They were closely based on photos, mostly by assistants (who were rotated between paintings) but with a final finish by Hirst.[31]

In February 2006, Hirst opened a major show in Mexico, at the Hilario Galguera Gallery, called The Death of God, Towards a Better Understanding of Life without God aboard The Ship of Fools. The exhibition attracted considerable media coverage as Hirst's first show in Latin America.

In June 2006 Hirst exhibited alongside the work of Francis Bacon (Triptychs) at the Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London. Included in the exhibition was the seminal vitrine, A Thousand Years (1990), and four triptychs: paintings, medicine cabinets and a new formaldehyde work entitled The Tranquility of Solitude (For George Dyer), influenced by Francis Bacon.

For the Love of God by Damien Hirst (2007)

A Thousand Years, one of Hirst's most provocative and engaging works, contains an actual life cycle. Maggots hatch inside a white minimal box, turn into flies, then feed on a bloody, severed cow's head on the floor of a claustrophobic glass vitrine. Above, hatched flies buzz around in the closed space. Many meet a violent end in an insect-o-cutor; others survive to continue the cycle. A Thousand Years was admired by Francis Bacon, who in a letter to a friend a month before he died, wrote about the experience of seeing the work at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Margarita Coppack notes that "It is as if Bacon, a painter with no direct heir in that medium, was handing the baton on to a new generation." Hirst has openly acknowledged his debt to Bacon, absorbing the painter's visceral images and obsessions early on and giving them concrete existence in sculptural form with works like A Thousand Years.[32]

In June 2007, Hirst gained the auction record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist — his Lullaby Spring, a 3 metre (10 ft) wide steel cabinet with 6,136 pills, sold for 19.2 million dollars to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar.[33]

In June-July 2007, Beyond Belief, an exhibition of Hirst's new work, opened at the White Cube gallery in London. The centre-piece, a Memento Mori titled For the Love of God, was a human skull recreated in platinum and adorned with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. [34]. Approximately £15,000,000 worth of diamonds were used. It was modelled on an 18th century skull, but the only surviving human part of the original is the teeth. The asking price for For the Love of God was £50,000,000 ($100 million or 75 million euros). It didn't sell outright,[35] and on 30 August 2008 was sold to a consortium that included Hirst himself and his gallery White Cube.[35]

Main article: Beautiful Inside My Head Forever

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever was a two day auction of Hirst's new work at Sotheby's, London, taking place on 15 and 16 September 2008.[9] It was unusual as he bypassed galleries and sold directly to the public.[36] The sale raised £111 million ($198 million) for 218 items.[10] The auction exceeded expectations,[10] and was ten times higher than the existing Sotheby's record for a single artist sale,[37] occurring as the financial markets plunged.[37] The Sunday Times said that Hirst's business colleagues had "propped up"[37] the sale prices, making purchases or bids which totalled over half of the £70.5 million spent on the first sale day:[37] Harry Blain of the Haunch of Venison gallery said that bids were entered on behalf of clients wishing to acquire the work.[37]

In November-December 2008, Hirst exhibited the diamond skull at the historic Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands amidst public controversy. The skull was exhibited next to an exhibition of paintings from the collection of the museum that were selected and curated by Hirst. According to Wim Pijbes, the museum director, there wasn't controversy however to show the skull in the historic museum among the board members. He explained that the exhibition "will attract people--and give a new aspect to the image of the Rijksmuseum as well. It boosts our image. Of course, we do the Old Masters but we are not a 'yesterday institution'. It's for now. And Damien Hirst shows this in a very strong way."[38]

In December 2008, Hirst contacted the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) demanding action be taken over works containing images of his skull sculpture For the Love of God made by a 16 year old graffiti artist, Cartrain, and sold on the internet. On the advice of his gallery, Cartrain handed over the artworks to DACS and forfeited the £200 he had made; he said, "I met Christian Zimmermann [from DACS] who told me Hirst personally ordered action on the matter."[39] In June 2009, copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry compared the two images and said, "This is fairly non-contentious legally. Ask yourself, what portion of the original--and not just the quantity but also the quality--appears in the new work? If a 'substantial portion' of the 'original' appears in the new work, then that's all you need for copyright infringement... Quantitatively about 80% of the skull is in the second image."[40]

Work philosophy

LSD by Damien Hirst

Although Hirst participated physically in the making of early works, he has always needed assistants (Carl Freedman helped with the first vitrines), and now the volume of work produced necessitates a "factory" setup, akin to Andy Warhol's or a Renaissance studio. This has led to questions about authenticity, as was highlighted in 1997, when a spin painting that Hirst said was a "forgery" appeared at sale, although he had previously said that he often had nothing to do with the creation of these pieces.

Rachel Howard painted Hirst's "best spot paintings".[41] Photographed by Ross McNicol.

Hirst said that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite"—"They're shit compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, "'make one of your own.' And she said, 'No, I want one of yours.' But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.'"[41] By February 1999, two assistants had painted 300 spot paintings. Hirst sees the real creative act as being the conception, not the execution, and that, as the progenitor of the idea, he is therefore the artist:

“
Art goes on in your head," he says. "If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down. Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings. There are on-going ideas I've been working out for years, like how to make a rainbow in a gallery. I've always got a massive list of titles, of ideas for shows, and of works without titles.[12]
”

Hirst is also known to volunteer repair work on his projects after a client has made a purchase. For example, this service was offered in the case of the suspended shark purchased by Steven A. Cohen.[42][43][44]

Appropriation

In 1999, chef Marco Pierre White said Hirst's Butterflies On Mars had plagiarised his own work, Rising Sun, which he then put on display in the restaurant Quo Vadis in place of the Hirst work.[45]

In 2000, Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over his sculpture, Hymn, which was a 20-foot (6.1 m), six ton, enlargement of his son Connor's 14" Young Scientist Anatomy Set, designed by Norman Emms, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull-based toy manufacturer Humbrol for £14.99 each.[22] Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities, Children Nationwide and the Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement,[22] as well as a "good will payment" to Emms.[45] The charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst also agreed to restrictions on further reproductions of his sculpture.[22]

Spiritus Callidus #2 by John Lekay, 1993, crystal skull

In 2006, a graphic artist and former research associate at the Royal College of Art, Robert Dixon, stated Hirst's print Valium had "unmistakable similarities" to one of his own designs. Hirst's manager contested this by explaining the origin of Hirst's piece was from a book The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry (1991)—not realising this was where Dixon's design had been published.[45][46]

In 2007, artist John LeKay said he was a friend of Damien Hirst between 1992 and 1994 and had given him a "marked-up duplicate copy" of a Carolina Biological Supply Company catalogue, adding "You have no idea how much he got from this catalogue. The Cow Divided is on page 647 – it is a model of a cow divided down the centre, like his piece." This refers to Hirst’s work Mother and Child, Divided—a cow and calf cut in half and placed in formaldehyde.[46] LeKay also claimed Hirst had copied the idea of For the Love of God from LeKay's crystal skulls made in 1993, and said, "I would like Damien to acknowledge that 'John really did inspire the skull and influenced my work a lot.'"[46] However, copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry reviewed images of LeKay's crystal skulls vis-a-vis Hirst's diamond skull, and LeKay's and Hirst's anatomy figure-artworks; from the images, Tackaberry saw no basis for copyright infringement claims in a legal sense.[40]

Hirst's own collection

In November 2006 Hirst was curator of In the darkest hour there may be light, the first public exhibition of (a small part of) his own collection. Now known as the ‘murderme collection’, this significant accumulation of works spans several generations of international artists, from well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol, to artists in earlier stages of their careers such as his former assistant Rachel Howard[47] , David Choe, Nicholas Lumb, Tom Ormond and Dan Baldwin.[48]

“As a human being, as you go through life, you just do collect. It was that sort of entropic collecting that I found myself interested in, just amassing stuff while you’re alive.” - Damien Hirst, 2006.[49]

Hirst is currently restoring the Grade I listed Toddington Manor, near Cheltenham, where he intends to eventually house the complete collection.[50]

In 2007, Hirst donated the 1991 sculptures "The Acquired Inability to Escape" and "Life Without You" and the 2002 work "Who is Afraid of the Dark?" (fly painting), and an exhibition copy from 2007 of "Mother and Child Divided" to the Tate Museum from his own personal collection of works.[51]

Restaurant ventures

Hirst had a short-lived partnership with chef Marco Pierre White in the restaurant Quo Vadis.

Hirst's best known restaurant involvement was Pharmacy, located in Notting Hill, London, which closed in September 2003. Although one of the owners, Hirst had only leased his art work to the restaurant, so he was able to retrieve and sell it at a Sotheby's auction, earning over £11 million. Some of the work had been adapted, e.g. by signing it prior to the auction.[52].

Hirst opened and currently helps to run a seafood restaurant, 11 The Quay, in the seaside town of Ilfracombe in the UK.

Personal life

Hirst lives with his Californian girlfriend, Maia Norman, by whom he has three sons: Connor Ojala, (born 1995, Kensington and Chelsea, London), Cassius Atticus (born 2000, North Devon) and Cyrus Joe (born 2005, Westminster, London).[53] Since the birth of Connor, he has spent most of his time at his remote farmhouse, a 300 year old former inn, in north Devon. Hirst and Norman are not married[54] although he has referred to her as his "common-law wife".[6] The artist owns a large compound in Baja, Mexico that serves as a part-time residence and art studio. The studio employs several artists that carry-out Hirst's projects.

Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990s: "I started taking cocaine and drink ... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck."[41] During this time he was renowned for his wild behaviour and extrovert acts, including for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists.[55] He was an habitué of the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behavior.

Critical responses

Positive

Tracey Emin compared Hirst with Andy Warhol.[56]

Hirst has been praised in recognition of his celebrity and the way this has galvanised interest in the arts, raising the profile of British art and helping to (re)create the image of "Cool Britannia." In the mid-1990s, the then-Heritage Secretary, Virginia Bottomley recognised him as "a pioneer of the British art movement", and even sheep farmers were pleased he had raised increased interest in British lamb.[57] Janet Street-Porter praised his originality, which had brought art to new audiences and was the "art-world equivalent of the Oasis concerts at Earl's Court".[57]

Andres Serrano is also known for shocking work and understands that contemporary fame does not necessarily equate to lasting fame, but backs Hirst: "Damien is very clever ... First you get the attention ... Whether or not it will stand the test of time, I don't know, but I think it will."[57] Sir Nicholas Serota commented, "Damien is something of a showman ... It is very difficult to be an artist when there is huge public and media attention. Because Damien Hirst has been built up as a very important figure, there are plenty of sceptics ready to put the knife in."[57]

Tracey Emin said: "There is no comparison between him and me; he developed a whole new way of making art and he's clearly in a league of his own. It would be like making comparisons with Warhol."[56] Despite Hirst's insults to him, Saatchi remains a staunch supporter, labelling Hirst a genius[57] and stating:

“
General art books dated 2105 will be as brutal about editing the late 20th century as they are about almost all other centuries. Every artist other than Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd and Damien Hirst will be a footnote.[58]
”

Negative

A Dead Shark Isn't Art, Stuckism International Gallery 2003.[59]

There has been equally vehement opposition to Hirst's work. Norman Tebbit, commenting on the Sensation exhibition, wrote "Have they gone stark raving mad? The works of the 'artist' are lumps of dead animals. There are thousands of young artists who didn't get a look in, presumably because their work was too attractive to sane people. Modern art experts never learn."[60] The view of the tabloid press is summed up by a Daily Mail headline: "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all." The Evening Standard art critic, Brian Sewell, said simply, "I don't think of it as art ... It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. Indeed there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep."[60]

The Stuckist art group was founded in 1999 with a specific anti-Britart agenda by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish;[61] Hirst is one of their main targets. They wrote (referring to a Channel 4 programme on Hirst):

“
The fact that Hirst's work does mirror society is not its strength but its weakness - and the reason it is guaranteed to decline artistically (and financially) as current social modes become outmoded. What Hirst has insightfully observed of his spin-paintings in Life and Death and Damien Hirst is the only comment that needs to be made of his entire oeuvre: "They're bright and they're zany - but there's fuck all there at the end of the day."[60]
”

In 2003, under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art, the Stuckism International Gallery exhibited a shark which had first been put on public display two years before Hirst's by Eddie Saunders in his Shoreditch shop, JD Electrical Supplies. Thomson asked, "If Hirst’s shark is recognised as great art, then how come Eddie’s, which was on exhibition for two years beforehand, isn’t? Do we perhaps have here an undiscovered artist of genius, who got there first, or is it that a dead shark isn’t art at all?" [59] The Stuckists suggested that Hirst may have got the idea for his work from Saunders' shop display.[62]

In 2008 leading art critic Robert Hughes said Hirst was responsible for the decline in contemporary art.[63] Hughes said Hirst's work was "tacky" and "absurd" in a 2008 TV documentary called The Mona Lisa Curse made by Hughes for Channel 4 in Britain. Hughes said it was "a little miracle" that the value of £5 million was put on Hirst's Virgin Mother (a 35 foot bronze statue), which was made by someone "with so little facility".[64] Hughes called Hirst's shark in formaldehyde "the world's most over-rated marine organism" and attacked the artist for "functioning like a commercial brand", making the case that Hirst and his work proved that financial value was now the only meaning that remained for art.[64]

Artworks

His works include:

  • In and Out of Love (1991), an installation of potted plants, caterpillars and monochrome canvases painted with sugar solution and glue. There were also (in a separate room) tables with ashtrays containing used cigarette butts. Eventually, the caterpillars metamorphose into butterflies, and the insects become fixed to the surfaces of the canvases. In its now fixed form, the work is held by the Yale Center for British Art and is on regular exhibit there.
  • The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde. This piece was one of the works in his Turner Prize nomination show.
  • Pharmacy(1992), a life-size recreation of a chemist's shop.
  • A Thousand Years (1991), composed of a vitrine with a glass division. In one half is the severed head of a cow on the floor; in the other is an insect electrocutor. Maggots introduced into the vitrine feed off the cow and then develop into flies that are killed by the electrocutor.
  • Amonium Biborate (1993)
  • Away from the Flock (1994), composed of a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde.
  • Arachidic Acid (1994) an early example of Hirst's spot paintings.
  • Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything (1996) multiple cows in a line head-to-tail, divided cross-sectionally into equal rectangular tanks of formaldehyde, equally-spaced, each containing about 3 feet (0.91 m) of the animals.
  • Beautiful Axe , Slash, Gosh Painting (1999) Signed on the reverse. Gloss household paint on canvas
  • Hymn (1999), a scaled-up replica of his son Connor's toy: a basic anatomical model of the male human body. The sculpture is 20 ft (6.1 m) tall and composed of painted bronze.
  • Mother and Child Divided, composed of a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde.
  • Two Fucking and Two Watching, includes a rotting cow and bull. This work was banned from exhibition in New York by public health officials.
  • God, composed of a cabinet containing pharmaceutical products.
  • The Stations of the Cross (2004), a series of twelve photographs depicting the final moments of Jesus Christ, made in collaboration with the photographer David Bailey.
  • The Virgin Mother, a massive sculpture depicting a pregnant female human, with layers removed from one side to expose the fœtus, muscle and tissue layers, and skull underneath. This work was purchased by real estate magnate Aby Rosen for display on the plaza of one of his properties, the Lever House, in New York City.
  • Breath (2001), a 45-second film of Samuel Beckett's play for the Beckett on Film series.
  • The Wrath of God (2005), a new version of a shark in formaldehyde.
  • The Inescapable Truth, (2005). Glass, steel, dove, human skull and formaldehyde solution.
  • The Sacred Heart of Jesus, (2005). Perspex, bull's heart, silver, assorted needles, scalpels, and formaldehyde solution.
  • Faithless, (2005). Butterflies and household gloss on canvas
  • The Hat Makes de Man, (2005). Painted bronze that simulates wood and hats.
  • The Death of God, (2006). Household gloss on canvas, human skull, knife, coin and sea shells. This painting, which is a part of a group of others which were made in Mexico, are believed to be "the beginning of Hirst's Mexican period".
  • For The Love of God, a platinum cast of an 18th century skull covered in 8,601 diamonds.[65]
  • Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain, a black calf tied to a pole pierced with arrows. The calf is in a tank of formaldehyde. Performer George Michael has recently purchased this calf and has made it Hirst's fourth most expensive piece.

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