the reason i'm choosing to speak about Damien Hirst is because i found an article in The Guardian about a recent exhibition of his at the Tate Britain, one that i encouraged my friend to go see while he was there. now, who knows if he will, but i realize that it's hard to get excited about going to see a show in which you don't know anything about the artist and the art work shown. so, this is for you, Aaron. and readers, this is your artist of the week!
yBa: young british artists, was a group of students that all studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. the artists that formed this group (Damien Hirst, Christine Borland, Tracy Emin) all joined together with the necessity to shock their viewers and create a sensation. they're collective thought process was "anything goes!" and they strove to make viewers think of how and why art was produced, what makes it art.
in 1997, Charles Saatchi put together an exhibition called "Sensation" in the Royal Academy of Art in London. this of course was a controversial and Duchampian move - placing art meant to shock or awe viewers in a very conventional and conservative academy. in "Sensation," Damien Hirst's work was "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Somone Living" and featured a 14 foot tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde in a glass case. for Damien Hirst, death is a central theme in his work, and this particular work became iconic for British art in the 1990s. if you want to read more about "Sensation," i suggest you Wikipedia it - they do a pretty good job showing the different works there, and they were pretty amazing and weird and shocking.
but back to Damien Hirst. "Sensation" was so popular, Saatchi's show elevated these artists in yBa to super-star status and Damien Hirst became the most famous of the group. the artwork you see above was sold in 2004 and made him the second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns which he surpassed in 2008. in 2008, he sold a complete show at Sotheby's auction house for 111 million pounds, breaking his own record and the record of a one artist auction. (recession? what economic recession?)
the level of critique in Hirst's work is sort of ambiguous. in his work "For the Love of God," 2007, he literally encrusted a skull with diamonds worth 15 million pounds. the asking price of the skull was 50 million pounds and didn't sell directly, but later was sold to a consortium including Hirst and his own gallery.
in these kinds of ostentatious works, we can kind of see Hirst critiquing the amount of money people are willing to pay for his work. it's kind of like enticing and daring the art market to pay outrageous amounts for outrageous animals and jewels and it speaks to the willingness of the art market to eat up whatever Damien Hirst, as a "brilliant super-star artist" creates. my professor spoke of Damien Hirst first creating his artwork as complete bull-shit with a total distaste for the art market, and then, after understanding the ridiculous amounts of money people are willing to pay for it, he sort of forwards the art market by continuing to produce and promote his own art.
i think i've gone on long enough about Damien Hirst. i'll link the article here and strongly suggest that anyone who plans on visiting London (soonish) should head to the Tate Britain and join the mass of viewers struggling to make out the meaning and critique of his work. if nothing else, it's strangely awe-inspiring.
cheers,
emily
Yes, I am in England right this second.
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