Damien hirst what is art

In , while studying at Goldsmiths College in London, Hirst curated Freeze , a rolling exhibition in three parts, featuring his work and that of fellow students. This show is considered the debut of the artists who would come to be known as the Young British Artists, or YBAs, whose approach was characterized by a combination of entrepreneurial and oppositional attitudes, the use of found materials, and an interest in shock and spectacle.

In the final iteration of Freeze, Hirst included two of his Spot paintings, which he painted directly onto the wall. The Spot paintings — , of which there are now more than one thousand, present multicolored spots on white or near-white grounds and are painted by hand in glossy house paint.

A subseries, the Pharmaceutical paintings — , features evenly spaced, multicolored circles. The title links these works to the medicine cabinets — and Visual Candy paintings —95 , all of which consider the cultural role of prescription drugs, the ways they are advertised, and the many promises that are made to their consumers. The medicine cabinets are filled with the empty packaging of various medications, highlighting the minimalist aesthetic of the boxes and plastic containers.

The Visual Candy paintings push the idea of false promises even further. Alluding to movements including Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art, they are exuberant, colorful paintings with euphoric, perhaps facetious, titles such as Happy Happy Happy , Wowee Zowee , and Super Silly Fun In Hirst created The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living : a fourteen-foot tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde.

The pupas hatched in the gallery, releasing live butterflies into the space. In Hirst collaborated on Pharmacy Restaurant and Bar in London, for which he designed the interior, transforming his work into an immersive environment. Since the early s Hirst has produced ambitious, captivating works ranging from the kaleidoscopic butterfly paintings —08 —made by placing thousands of butterfly wings in intricate geometric patterns onto painted canvases—to For the Love of God , a platinum cast of a human skull set with 8, diamonds.

While his exhibition Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable filled the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice with monumental, fantastical sculptures made of precious metals and stones, covered in illusionistic barnacles, Hirst subsequently returned to the gestural immediacy of painting with the Veil paintings —18 , in which he continued his examination of color and its effects on the eye.

They were known for their unusual materials and for their challenging art concepts. One of Hirst's early works, "With Dead Head," illustrates his interest in death and shaking up the art establishment. In the photograph, the artist, with a huge grin on his face, poses next to a severed head in a morgue. While not everyone was enthralled with his work, Hirst received support from Charles Saatchi, an advertising titan and art collector.

Saatchi lent financial assistance to Hirst and also started collecting Hirst's pieces, which also advanced the artist's reputation. Saatchi bought two of Hirst's medicine cabinet sculptures, which one critic later said constituted "a constellation of still lifes that express and reflect the human body as a field of vulnerabilities and of hopeful medical interventions. There he displayed "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," a foot-long glass tank with a shark preserved in formaldehyde.

The shark had been bought from an Australian fisherman. Hirst continued to set the art world on fire with his work at the Venice Bienniale, a renowned international art exhibition.

There he showed "Mother and Child Divided," an installation piece that featured a bisected cow and her calf displayed in four vitrines, or glass cases, filled with formaldehyde. With his controversial and sometimes gruesome works, Hirst soon became one of the best-known artists in Britain.

He won the prestigious Turner Prize in Even though his career was thriving, not every exhibit went as planned. He wanted to bring rotting cattle for an exhibit in New York City in , but he was stopped by the city's health authorities. Hirst, however, enjoyed a warm welcome the following year with a show at New York's Gagosian Gallery. In addition to his glass tank works, Hirst has made paintings and sculptures. Damien Hirst. For the Love of God , Hirst 's diamond-encrusted skull, has already become one of the most talked about works ….

The …. Luke White. Harry Hill. Steven Connor. In Gertrude Stein wrote that in a painting there should be "no air As Steven Connor …. Main menu additional Become a Member Shop. In Tate Britain. Prints and Drawings Rooms 24 artworks by Damien Hirst. Read full Wikipedia entry. Artworks Left Right. Damien Hirst With Dead Head Damien Hirst Salad Damien Hirst Steak and Kidney This series are his most recognizable and iconic works, aside from his animal sculptures.

No one knows how many there are, but estimates are in the thousands. While the artist painted the earliest ones, later spot paintings continue to be produced by assistants under his direction, sparking questions about value. The cheerful impact of these canvases might at first seem at odds with Hirst's preoccupation with mortality.

In fact, they are very much in keeping with it. Each of Hirst's dot compositions mimics the molecular structure of an addictive, potentially lethal substance that cannot be accessed without a doctor's consent. These paintings thus constitute a witty, withering comment on a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that dispenses drugs like candy.

Hirst says, "I was always a colorist I just move color around on its own. So that's what the spot paintings came from - to create that structure to do those colors, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of color. First on display at the Cohen gallery in and now permanently on view the Tate Modern, this installation is a detailed replica of a pharmacy.

The work is related to the spot paintings, named after pharmaceuticals, but the impact is strikingly different. According to the artist, this work was inspired by walking into a pharmacy and marveling at its ability "to provoke an idea of confidence. With all the trappings and none of the personnel, the space seems potentially sinister.

An additional dimension of the original installation in enhanced this effect. Holes bored into the walls allowed insects to enter and feed off honeycomb placed around the room. They then flew toward the light and were zapped by the insectocuter. Their performance was a metaphor for the inevitability of death - the end at which we all arrive at some point, and the ultimate futility of modern medicine's efforts to prevent it.

Glass, faced particleboard, painted MDF, beech, ramin, wooden dowels, aluminum, pharmaceutical packaging, desks, office chairs, foot stools, apothecary bottles, colored water, insect-o-cutor, medical text books, stationery, bowls, resin, honey, and honeycomb - Tate Modern, London. This floor-based sculpture is comprised of four glass tanks, each of which contains one bisected half of a cow and calf.

The white wood frames on each tank evoke the pure, clean lines of classic Minimalist sculpture. Their contents, however, are neither clean nor minimalist. Each animal is suspended above the base of the tank, its front legs dangling limply, deepening the sense of lifelessness.

The tongue of the calf lolls out of its mouth. The tanks are installed in pairs, the calf in front of the mother, with space between each pair allowing a visitor to walk directly along the inside of each animal as if through a hallway, observing the pale and intricate internal organs and skeletal structure on either side.

The effect is, to say the least, disconcerting, turning a sacred theme in art - that of the mother and child - into a ghastly, graphic, literal dissection. Presented at the Venice Biennale, this was Hirst's international debut. The influence of Francis Bacon, Hirst's friend and major supporter, is apparent in the choice of subject and unflinching attention to gory detail.

In focusing on the physical consequences of death, the piece hearkens back to another time-honored theme in western art, that of the memento mori, a class of images devoted to reminding viewers of the inevitability of death and the immortality of the soul. Hirst's work has both these qualities. While certainly a reminder of death, the bodies are suspended in a substance that makes them weightless.

When seen from the side, the dissection is invisible and the mother and child seem to ascend side-by-side in profile.