Few artists share Damien Hirst ’s power to shock and invigorate the debate surrounding contemporary art. The enfant terrible of the 1990s YBA era, Hirst is today one of the most successful artists in the world. His works’ bling, morbid spectacle and exquisite beauty are all part of a profound artistic project. Hirst explores the relationships between life, death, art, science and consumerism. His sensationalism, provocation and self-promotion play upon preconceptions of what art should be. He has refashioned the role of the artist as visionary craftsman into that of contemporary impresario.
Hirst came to prominence as the leading light of the Young British Artists who emerged in London during the late 1980s. He studied at Goldsmiths under Michael Craig-Martin, and organised the formative Freeze exhibition of 1988, which first drew the art world’s attention to the YBAs. In 1992 his work was included in Charles Saatchi’s Young British Artists exhibition. He won the Turner Prize in 1995 for a body of work including his bisected cow and calf, Mother and Child (Divided) (1993). His preserved tiger shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), formed the infamous centrepiece of Saatchi’s monumental Royal Academy YBA exhibition, Sensation, in 1997. In the era of ‘Cool Britannia’, Britpop and explosive youth culture, Hirst was part of a generation that put London on the map.
Hirst has created many iconic and inventive series over the past three decades. A Thousand Years, a vitrine containing a cow’s head, flies and an Insect-O-Cutor, captivated Hirst’s hero Francis Bacon on its 1990 debut. Hirst’s first works using butterflies , both alive and incarcerated in paint, were shown the following year. His ‘spot’ and ‘spin’ paintings both began to appear from the mid-1990s. His pills and medicine-cabinets led to the opening of his Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill, London, in 1998. Like his animals in formaldehyde, these sculptures reflect a keen interest in Minimalism and containment. In 2007 he produced perhaps his most controversial work, For the Love of God: a platinum-cast human skull studded with 8,601 diamonds.
More recently, Hirst’s magnum opus Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable cast a spell on Venice in 2017. He presented a hoard of wondrous sculptures and artefacts , said to have been retrieved from the Indian Ocean. The precious cargo, Hirst’s story told, had been lost in a shipwreck more than 2,000 years ago. From pristine simulations of barnacles and coral to an accompanying Netflix documentary detailing the excavation, the exhibition’s magic was wholly conceived. Any artistic encounter, Hirst suggested, demands a certain suspension of disbelief: through our faith in art, perhaps, we might live forever. ‘There has only ever been one idea,’ he says, ‘and it’s the fear of death; art is about the fear of death.’
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Lullaby Winter
Damien Hirst (B. 1965)
Away from the Flock
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
The Warrior and the Bear
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Away From the Flock (Divided)
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Mickey
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Swimming Form in Endless Motion
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
The Sleep of Reason
DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965)
Veil of Mother's Tenderness
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Sarcosine Antihydride
Damien Hirst (B. 1965)
Where Will it End?
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Judas Iscariot (The Twelve Disciples)
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Mickey
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Veil of Hidden Meaning
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Alphaprodine
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Arginine Decarboxylase
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Aphidicolin Diacetate
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Ashtray Head/Fallen Empire
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
My Way
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Blue Skies
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
I'm in Love for the First Time
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Veil of Imagination
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Barium Carbonate-13C
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Aldosterone 18, 21-Diacetate-3-(0-Carboxymethyl) Oxime: BSA
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Allodihydrocortisol
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
N-(9-acridinyl) Maleimide
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
The Incomplete Truth
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Inviolability
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Strontium 500
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Devotion
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
A Beautiful Thing To Do
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Veil of Serendipity
Damien Hirst (B. 1965)
Do You Know What I Like About You?
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Judas Iscariot
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
The Wonder of You
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Untitled
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Cardura Doxazosin
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Midas and the Infinite
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Calcium Gluconate Injection
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Ulysses
DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965)
Beautiful, let's go to la-la land and make out with all the top bollocks yum yums and drink sugary syrup liquid until we overdose on fucking bliss painting (without emotion)
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Cefoperazone
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Afterworld
DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)
Ocean Spray
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Vinblastine
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Beautiful mis-shapen purity clashing excitedly outwards painting