Damien Hirst

I learned a bit about Damien Hirst in my Art History 102 class last Friday.  Damien Hirst is an English multimedia artist.  His works often deal with the concept of death.  In fact, his most famous series of works feature various dead animals which have been preserved in formaldehyde.  This is a controversial form of art.  Some see it as hardly art at all!  In my opinion, when you are as loaded as this guy, you can obtain anything and turn it into art.  Even if that process is as simple as sawing an animal in half and preserving the halves in separate tanks, side by side.

 

There is a definite sense of death with these works.  While the bodies of these animals have been preserved and some kept intact (not sawed in half) their eyes remain lifeless and cold.  The windowed encasements remind me of a casket or even more so of a tomb.  This series of works is both eerie and fascinating.  Accompanying the feeling of death and coldness, the aesthetic of formaldehyde and a massive, class encasement gives the works a scientific feel.  This is especially so with the five-legged calf.  And the encased "unicorn" pony.  I am strongly reminded of butterflies pinned in a shadowbox.  I would not be surprised to find a wooly mammoth among this series of works.  The clean edges really allow the viewer to focus solely on the subject being exhibited encased.  

The most famous of his formaldehyde encasings is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (above).  While the long title creates an ambiguous and unresolved meaning to the work, this 18 foot long Tiger Shark encased is, in my opinion, quite blunt in appearance, not to mention daunting and eerie.   To the right is another of his shark encasements.  Why this one is not as popular, I'm not sure, but I feel that it is an ultra effective way to portray the coming of death!  It is ironic that this dead and preserved creature is still wild and terrifying at the angle of this photograph.

Stepping away from his formaldehyde series, my favorite of his works is mind boggling.  It is called For the Love of God.  It is my favorite mainly because of its title.  It was inspired by his mother who exclaimed to him, "For the love of God, Damien, what will you do next?"  

I like to think that Damien Hirst has an outrageous sense of humor, due to him creating this work as a response to that comment.  While the 8,601 flawless diamonds covering every surface of the skull, costing roughly $14 million is incredibly shocking, what shocked me the most was that this is an actual human skull thought to be from a European who lived between 1720 and 1810.  I immediately thought, "Who's Skull!?"

While this piece, too, has a relation to death, I feel that the themes behind this work are mostly according to shock value. While I appreciate the craftsmanship that went into constructing this work, I laugh to myself and marvel at the power of wealth, which I feel is a theme behind this work, due to the nature of it's making.