Damien Hirst

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Cardura Doxazosin

Damien Hirst (b. 1965)

Midas and the Infinite

DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)

Calcium Gluconate Injection

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)

Beautiful mis-shapen purity clashing excitedly outwards painting