Hirst is a scandalous artist. Everything you need to know about Damien Hirst

The Gary Tatintsian Gallery has opened an exhibition of Damien Hirst, one of the most expensive and famous contemporary artists. This is not the first time Hirst has been brought to Russia: before that there was a retrospective at the Russian Museum, a small exhibition at the Triumph Gallery, as well as a collection of the artist himself at MAMM. This time, visitors will be presented with the most significant works of 2008, sold by the artist himself at Sotheby's personal auction in the same year. Buro 24/7 tells why butterflies, multi-colored circles and tablets are so important for understanding Hirst's work.

How Hirst became an artist

Damien Hirst can be fully considered the personification of Young British Artists - a generation of no longer young, but very successful artists, whose peak heyday came for the 90s. Among them are Tracey Emin with neon inscriptions, Jake and Dinos Chapman with a love for small figures and a dozen other artists.

The YBA are united not only by their studies at the prestigious Goldsmiths College, but also by their first joint exhibition, Freeze, which was held in 1988 in an empty administration building in London's docklands. Hirst himself acted as the curator - he selected the works, ordered the catalog and planned the opening of the exhibition. Freeze attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi - advertising tycoon, collector and future patron of Young British Artists. Two years later, Saatchi acquired Hirst's first installation in his collection, A Thousand Years, and also offered him sponsorship for his future creations.

Damien Hirst, 1996. Photo: Catherine McGann/Getty Images

The theme of death, which later became central to Hirst’s work, already appears in A Thousand Years. The essence of the installation was a constant cycle: flies emerged from the eggs of larvae, crawled to the rotting cow's head and died on the wires of an electronic fly swatter. A year later, Saatchi lent Hirst money to create another work about the circle of life - the famous stuffed shark placed in formaldehyde.

“The physical impossibility of death in the consciousness of a living person”

In 1991, Charles Saatchi bought an Australian shark for Hirst for six thousand pounds. Today the shark symbolizes the soap bubble of modern art. For newspaper people, it has become a common staple (for example, the Sun article headlined “£50,000 for fish and chips”), and also became one of the main topics of the book by economist Don Thompson “How to sell a stuffed shark for 12 million: the scandalous truth about contemporary art and auction houses."

Despite the noise, hedge fund head Steve Cohen bought the work in 2006 for eight million dollars. Among the interested buyers was Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Modern gallery, Sovriska's largest museum along with New York's MoMA and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Attention to the installation was attracted not only by the list of key names for contemporary art, but also by its duration of existence - 15 years. Over the years, the shark's body had become rotten, and Hirst had to replace it and stretch it onto a plastic frame. “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living” was the first work in the “Natural History” series - subsequently Hirst also placed a sheep and dismembered cow carcasses in formaldehyde.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991

Black Sheep, 2007

Love's Paradox (Surrender or Autonomy, Separateness as a Precondition for Connection.), 2007

The Tranquility of Solitude (for George Dyer), 2006

Rotations and kaleidoscopes

Hirst's works can be divided into several genres. In addition to the aforementioned aquariums with formaldehyde, there are “rotations” and “spots” - the latter are performed by the artist’s assistants in his studio. Butterflies continue the theme of life and death. There is also a kaleidoscope like a stained glass window in gothic cathedral, and the grandiose installation “Falling in Love or Falling Out of Love” - rooms completely filled with these insects. To create the latter, Hirst sacrificed about nine thousand butterflies: 400 new insects were brought daily to the Tate Gallery, where the retrospective was held, to replace the dead.

The retrospective became the most visited in the history of the museum: in five months it was seen by almost half a million spectators. Next to the theme of life and death, there is also a logical “pharmacy” - when looking at the artist’s dot paintings, associations arise specifically with medicines. In 1997, Damien Hirst opened the Pharmacy restaurant. It closed in 2003, and the sale of decorative and interior items at auction brought in an astounding $11.1 million. Hirst also developed the theme of medications in a more visual way - a separate series by the artist is dedicated to cabinets with hand-laid out pills. The most financially successful work was “Spring Lullaby” - a rack of pills brought the artist $19 million.

Damien Hirst, Untitled, 1992; In Search of Nirvana, 2007 (installation fragment)

"For the Love of God"

Another famous work Hirst (and also expensive in every sense) - a skull studded with more than eight thousand diamonds. The work received its name from the First Epistle of John - “For this is the love of God.” This again refers us to the theme of the frailty of life, the inevitability of death and discussions about the essence of existence. In the forehead of the skull is a diamond worth four million pounds. The production itself cost Hirst 12 million, and the price for the work ultimately amounted to about 50 million pounds (about 100 million dollars). The skull was shown in Amsterdam state museum, and then sold to a group of investors through the White Cube gallery of Jay Jopling, another major dealer who collaborated with Hirst.

Damien Hirst, "For this is the love of God", 2007

Records, fakes and the phenomenon of fame

Although Hirst does not set absolute records, he is considered one of the most expensive among living artists. The rise in prices for his works reached a peak in the late 2000s, with the sale of a shark, a skull and other works. A separate episode can be called the Sotheby's auction at the height of the economic crisis of 2008: it brought him 111 million pounds, which is 10 times more than the previous record - a similar auction by Picasso in 1993. The most expensive lot was the "Golden Calf" - the carcass of a bull in formaldehyde, sold for £10.3 million.

The story of Hirst's formation is an example of an ideal scenario for anyone contemporary artist, in which competent marketing played almost a key role. Even ridiculous stories like a gallery cleaner Eyestorm, who put the artist’s installation in a trash bag, or the Florida pastor, convicted of trying to sell Hirst fakes in 2014, look incomprehensible against the backdrop of the loud antics of the artist himself. The decline in interest in Hirst has become most obvious in the last five years after the next exhibition at White Cube- the pressure of critics became more noticeable, Hirst’s ingenuity no longer amazed the jaded public, and auction records passed to other players - Richter, Koons and Kapoor. One way or another, Hirst’s halo of fame continues to spread to his old works, which today can be viewed in the Tatintsyan Gallery. Hirst also has new projects ahead - on the eve of the Venice Biennale, the artist opens a large exhibition at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. According to the press release, they are "the fruit of a decade of work" - it is likely that everyone will be talking about Damien Hirst again.

Damien Hirst and his shark

Becoming a brand is an important part of life. This is our world.

Damien Hurt, artist

It takes a certain amount of courage to act as if you know exactly what is good or, more importantly, what will be considered good in the future. In the art world, it's a matter of faith: some people just have instinct and others don't. Disagreements arise at the moment when it is necessary to decide which category a particular person belongs to.

Nick Paumgarten. Days and nights in the Leo Koenig gallery. The New Yorker Magazine

Briton Damien Hirst, creator of the $12 million stuffed shark, is one of those rare artists who can rightfully be said to have changed the way we think about art and a career in art. At forty, Hirst was worth £100 million, more than Picasso, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí combined at that age - and these three may well top the list of artists who based their success on money. Francis Bacon, who briefly held the auction record for a contemporary British artist, died in 1992 at the age of 82, leaving behind an estate worth £11 million. It is difficult to imagine two more dissimilar, even contrasting artistic destinies than those of Francis Bacon and Damien Hirst.

Do the above sums mean that Hirst as an artist can be put on a par with Picasso or Warhol? The story of Damien Hirst - his work, his prices, his shark and his client Charles Saatchi - serves as a good introduction to some of the objects that are recognized as conceptual art today, and the artist's role in promoting his work and in commanding high prices for such art. .

Hirst was born in Bristol and raised in Leeds. His father was a mechanic who repaired and sold cars; his mother was an amateur artist. Damien first studied at art school in Leeds, then, after two years working on construction sites in London, he tried to get into both St Martin's College London and some college in Wales. He was eventually accepted into the Goldsmiths Art School in London.

Many art schools in Great Britain perform a rather strange function: they gather students who were unable to get into a real college. But Goldsmith School was anything but like that in the 1980s; it attracted many talented students and inventive teachers. Goldsmith introduced an innovative program that did not require students to be able to draw or paint. Since then this model art education has become widespread.

As a student at Goldsmiths, Hirst regularly visited the morgue; he later said that many of the themes of his works originated there. In 1988 he curated the acclaimed exhibition Freeze in the empty Port of London building in London's docklands; The exhibition featured the works of seventeen students of the school and his own creation - a composition of cardboard boxes painted with latex paints. The Freeze exhibition itself was also the fruit of Hirst’s creativity. He selected the works himself, ordered the catalog and planned the opening ceremony. He borrowed money to organize the exhibition from the Canadian company Olympiad York, which at that time was engaged in the construction of the Canary Wharf business complex on the territory of the new port. When Norma” Rosenthal from the Royal Academy of Arts said he would get lost in the waterfront. Hirst met him and personally took him to the exhibition. Freeze became the starting point for several YBA artists; In addition, the famous collector and art patron Charles Saatchi drew attention to Hirst. If speak about future fate in art, the Goldsmiths graduating class who took part in this exhibition - Hirst, Matt Collishaw, Gary Hume, Michael Landy, Sarah Lucas and Fiona Rae - was probably the most successful in British history.

In 1989, Hirst graduated from school. In 1990, with friend Carl Friedman, he organized another exhibition, Gambler, in a hangar in an empty Bermondsey factory building. Saatchi visited this exhibition; Friedman remembers how he stood with his mouth open in front of Hirst’s installation called “A Thousand Years” - a visual demonstration of life and death: there, in a glass citrine, fly larvae emerged from eggs to crawl behind the glass partition to eat - a rotting cow's head.

The larvae hatched into flies, which then died on the exposed wires of the “electronic fly swatter.” A visitor could watch “A Thousand Years” today, and then come again a few days later and see how the cow’s head had shrunk in the meantime and the pile of dead flies had grown. Saatchi purchased the installation and offered Hirst money to create future works.

Thus, in 1991, with money from Saatchi, Hirst created “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living.” He described the idea of his shark in an interview published in the very first issue of Frieze magazine. “I like it when an object symbolizes a feeling. The shark is scary, larger than you, and in an environment that is unfamiliar to you. Dead, she looks like she’s alive, and alive, she looks like dead.”

Hirst's titles are always an integral part of the work, and a considerable part of the meaning invested in the work is contained in the title. If the shark were simply called "Shark", the viewer would have every right to say: "Wow, a real shark" - and move on. But the title “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Consciousness of a Living Person” forces the viewer to come up with the meaning embedded in the work. The name, by the way, caused no less controversy than the shark itself.

In January 2005, amid much hype for the sculpture in the art world, Physical Impossibility was acquired by Steve Cohen. Later that year, Hirst agreed to replace the shark carcass that had fallen into disrepair. He called Vic Hislop, the fisherman from whom he bought his first shark in 1991, and ordered three more tiger sharks and one great white shark of the same size and ferocity as the original. Hislop sent Hirst as many as five sharks, one of them as a free app. They were all frozen and taken to a hangar at a former airport in Gloucestershire. The shark that Hirst shaved to replace the first one was pumped with about 850 liters of formaldehyde - ten rads more than the first one, and in a higher concentration. The new incarnation of the shark was exhibited at the Kunsthaus in Bregenz (Austria) as part of Re Object, a pop culture exhibition that also included works by Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons. In September 2007, the new shark was shipped by sea to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it will be on display for the next three years.

Hearst's shark was not the first. In 1989, two years before Hirst, a man named Eddie Saunders exhibited another shark, a golden hammerhead, in his Shoreditch electrical shop. In 2003, Saunders' shark appeared at the International Stuckist Gallery in East London with the caption "A dead shark is not art." Stuckists are an international movement spanning 40 countries; they are against conceptual art like shark stuff, and also against a movement in art known as anti-art.

Saunders emphasized that not only did he himself catch the shark displayed in his window, but the shark itself was much nicer than Hearst’s. Saunders put his shark up for sale for £1 million with the caption: “New Year Sale: Shark for just £1 million; save £5m compared to Damien Hirst's copy." Having earned considerable fame from this, he nevertheless did not receive a single commercial offer.

One of the properties that gives value to a work of art is its uniqueness, the fact that there are no exactly the same works and never will be. An engraving or sculpture may exist in several copies, but the size of the series is always known. It might be expected that Hirst would not create new versions of the shark, so as not to reduce the value of the first shark owned by Kozn. But Hearst acted differently. At the beginning of 2006, he opened his first exhibition in Latin America, at the Hilario Galguera Gallery in Mexico City; The exhibition was called “The Death of the Lord.” Its central exhibit was the sculpture “The Wrath of God” - another tiger shark in formaldehyde. 11 and this time it is a stuffed one and a half meter shark - the one that Peak Hislop added for good measure - made and installed by German craftsmen under the supervision of the artist. New shark was sold before the opening of the exhibition for $4 million to the Samsung Corporation Museum in Seoul (Korea). Steve Cohen did not publicly comment on the sudden addition to the shark family or the threat posed by the three remaining sharks in Hearst's refrigerator.

So, besides sharks, what does one of the richest artists in the world do? Hirst's work can be divided into six categories. The first group consists of works - “aquariums”, which he himself attributes to the “Natural History” series; “aquariums”—reservoirs containing formaldehyde—usually contain animal bodies, whole or dissected. These can be not only sharks, but also cows or, say, sheep. Hirst describes these creatures as "frozen in death", they express "the joy of life and the inevitability of death." The first shark was followed by a tinned sheep, which reportedly sold for £2.1 million.

The second category is Hirst's long-running "file cabinet" series, which features medical and pharmaceutical cabinets with collections of surgical instruments or medicine jars. At an exhibition in Mexico City, Jorge Vergara, president of a Mexican vitamin company, paid $3 million for “Blood of Christ,” an installation of paracetamol tablets in a medical cabinet. In June 2007, Hirst's "Spring Lullaby" - a cabinet containing 6,136 hand-made assorted tablets arranged on razor blades - set a record at London's Christie's for the price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist. Lullaby cost £9.6 million ($19.1 million); the previous record belonged to the work of Jasper Johns and amounted to $17 million, and the record amount for Hirst himself was paid a month earlier at a New York auction for “Winter Lullaby,” a work from the same series, and amounted to $7.4 million.

Hirst's third major series includes the so-called dot paintings - colored circles (fifty or more pieces) on a white background in regular rows: dot paintings are called, as a rule, but the names medicines. The reference to medicine makes us think about powerful means of influence, arising from a combination of different, including contrasting, elements.

The kidney paintings are the work of Hirst's assistants. The master indicates what paints to use and how to place the circles, but he himself does not even touch the canvas. Apparently, it is very important which assistant you occupy! this picture. Hirst once said that “the best person to draw circles for me was Rachel. It was brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best you can get from my dot paintings was done by Rachel.” Hirst loudly asserts his rights to the concept of dot paintings: he once sued a subsidiary of British Airways, accusing it of copyright infringement. The fact is that the company used colored mugs in its advertising. All British newspapers wrote about this case. In May 2007, at a Sotheby's auction in New York, a dot painting measuring 194x154 cm was sold for $1.5 million.

Paintings of the fourth category - paintings of rotation - are created on a rotating potter's wheel. They say that in the process of “painting” such a picture, Hirst, wearing protective overalls and glasses, stands on a stepladder and throws paint onto a rotating base - a canvas or board. From time to time he commands his assistant: “More red” or “Turpentine.” Hirst says that the main advantage of rotation paintings is that “it’s simply impossible to draw a bad one.” According to him, he even tried to smear the paints with a mop, but the picture still looked good. Each such picture is a visual representation of the energy of the random. The rotation paintings presented in Mexico City differed from earlier ones in their dark colors and the image of a skull in the center.

The fifth category is paintings with butterflies. According to one version, this is a collage of thousands of individual wings. But the other one is tropical butterflies on a canvas painted in one color with glossy paint. Butterflies are another touch to old topic life and death. These works are created by technicians in a separate studio in Hackney. One of the first paintings with butterflies was purchased by football player David Beckham for 250 thousand pounds sterling.

Hirst's London dealer, White Cube, sold 400 butterfly and rotation paintings and 600 dot paintings. Prices reached up to 300 thousand pounds per painting. The smallest dot painting - 20x20cm - is sold in the gallery for 20 thousand pounds. Signed photographic prints of the Valium spot painting, limited to 500 copies, sold for $2,500. These facts help explain how Damien Hirst managed to acquire a fortune of £100 million by the age of forty, and why comparisons with Picasso's earnings can be misleading.

Some of Hirst's works combine features of several categories. Thus, a cabinet with fish in a formaldehyde solution can be classified as both a card series and an “aquarium” series; and the artist’s goal here is the same as in a dot painting - to create a composition of color and shape. Titles similar works, as always with Hirst, are meaningful and should attract additional attention, as, for example, “Isolated elements floating in one direction for the sake of understanding.”

Finally, last category Hirst's work was first shown at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in March 2004. The exhibition included 31 photorealistic oil paintings, leading some critics to remark, "Yes, he can really paint!" The exhibition was called Damien Hirst: The Elusive Truth, and large canvases filled six rooms in the gallery. The subject of most of the paintings was violent death. One of the paintings was called “Cocaine Addict Abandoned by Society”: the other, depicting a scene in a morgue, was “Autopsy and Dissected Human Brain.”

In an interview at the Gagosian Gallery, Hirst indicated that these works, like the shark and the paintings with colored circles and butterflies, were produced by a team of assistants. Several people are involved in the creation of each painting, so no one can call himself the author of this work of art. Hirst himself adds a few brushstrokes and a signature. In another interview, he said that he did not know how to paint in oils and if he really did this, the buyer would get a disgusting picture. Regarding the ethicality of putting his name on works created in four studios with forty assistants, he said: “I like it when a factory makes things, and the things are separated from ideas, but I wouldn’t like it if a factory made ideas.” "

Those who praised the exhibition said Hirst was meditating on the theme of death in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. Art critic Jerry Saltz of the Village Voice commented: "The best thing that can be said about these canvases is that Hirst works in the space between the painting and the artist's name: Damien Hirst makes Damien Hirst paintings." The paintings themselves are just labels, carriers of the brand. Like Prada or Gucci. You pay more, but you get the thrill of owning a brand. By paying from 250 thousand to 2 million dollars, a simpleton or speculator can purchase a work that is just a name.”

All the works were sold on the first day of the exhibition at Gagosian, and the maximum price - $2.2 million - almost equaled Hirst's then record, a sculpture in the form of a medical cabinet. Hearst imitates fashion designers also in that it sells “mass series” in parallel with branded products. Those visitors who cannot afford a Hirst painting or even a signed photograph can purchase T-shirts.

Branding, as we know, increases the price of ordinary things, so the social activities of branded artists like Hirst very often come down to money and publicity. On New Year's Eve 1997, Hirst and his friends Jonathan Kennedy and Matthew Freud (a relative of the artist Lucian Freud and a distant relative of Sigmund Freud) opened a bar and restaurant in Notting Hill called the Pharmacy. The shape was designed by Prada, the furniture was designed by Jasper Morrison, and Hirst himself filled the room with sculptures in the form of medical cabinets and paintings with butterflies. In the toilets, for example, there were cabinets with latex gloves and medical candles. The cocktails were called “Detox” and “Voltarol Retarder”. Hirst even installed a green neon cross in the restaurant, like in front of the entrance to a real pharmacy.

The restaurant immediately attracted the arts scene and celebrities like Hugh Grant, Madonna and Kate Moss. The "Pharmacy" was featured on the front pages of many newspapers - but the Royal Pharmaceutical Society filed a lawsuit alleging that the name "Pharmacy" was misleading to sick people. Hurst decided to use the hype to the fullest and proposed changing the name of his restaurant every few weeks to all sorts of anagrams of the word Pharmacy (“Pharmacy”): today the restaurant will be called Achy Ramp, tomorrow - Army Chap... But the newspapers stopped writing about the scandal, and that’s it calmed down. The words “Bar and Restaurant” were added to the name “Pharmacy”, and the green cross in front of the entrance was removed.

The pharmacy closed in 2003. Sotheby's contemporary art specialist Oliver Barker accidentally saw from the bus how the sign was being dismantled and suggested organizing an auction. There were 150 items from the restaurant up for sale; Barker himself said that this was the first auction in Sotheby's 259-year history to consist entirely of commissioned works by a single living author. Hirst designed the cover for the catalog, which itself became a collector's item.

The Pharmacy furnishings, previously priced at £3 million, fetched an astonishing £11.1 million at auction. The auction was personally attended by 500 people; 35 employees accepted suggestions from absentees by telephone. Canvas with butterflies " Full of love"was sold to London dealer Timothy Taylor for 364 thousand pounds; Harry Blaine from Deer Side competed with him, representing the owner of Christie's, Francois Pinault. But Blaine got the £1.2 million Fragile Truth medical locker, one of a pair of six-door medical lockers from the Pharmacy bar.

Six ashtrays from the Pharmacy, expected to sell for £100, brought in £1,600. Two martini glasses, estimated at £50-70, sold for £4,800. London dealer Alia Faggionato paid £1,440 for a pair of birthday party invitations. The pepper and salt set went for £1,920. Forty rolls of gold restaurant wallpaper made to Hirst's design brought in £9,600. Bidding for six Jasper Morrison-designed dining chairs reached £2,500 when one bidder in the room quoted £10,000 - straight out of the textbook, an illustration of the "I've got to have it" subculture where money no longer matters.

Previously, Hirst entered into an agreement that allowed him to buy back his works from those who received the property after the bankruptcy of the restaurant for 5 thousand pounds. The investment turned out to be successful, considering that £11.1 million worth of items were sold at the auction. The Pharmacy's premise, like works of art sold at auction, brought in more profit in one evening than the restaurant itself did in six years.

Is Hirst's contemporary art inherent? inner meaning, or do his works only borrow it from brilliant titles? Virginia Button, curator of the Gate Modern gallery, argues that there is an inner meaning. She called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living "brutally honest and confrontational" and said of Hirst that "he draws attention to the paranoid denial of death that permeates our culture."

Many people share Button's view of the significance of Hirst's work. To be convinced of this, just look at the list of awards he received over ten years. In 1995 - the Turner Prize, awarded each year to a British artist under 50 years of age. The prize was awarded to a sculpture consisting of two pairs of glass boxes with a narrow passage between them.

Each display of one pair contains half a crown, cut vertically lengthwise from nose to tail. In the second set of display cases there is a calf cut up in exactly the same way. The whole thing bears the title “Mother and Child Separated,” which again illustrates the market value of the title, which forces the viewer to interpret the object for themselves. Why a cow? A horse is too noble an animal, and the viewer will not feel any kinship with a goat.

In May 2003, Hirst became the first artist to have a work sent into space. His dot pattern with colored circles was used as a table to calibrate the instrument on the British Beagle spacecraft, then launched as part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express program (see photo). Attached to the picture was a recording of the British rock band Blur, which was supposed to sound from the probe as a signal about the landing of the device. On Christmas Eve 2003, Beagle hit the surface of Mars at 225 km/h; the landing module, and with it Hearst's dot painting, were shattered. Another spot painting was featured in Meg Ryan's film Kate and Leopold, where it represented the art and culture of the 20th century.

The most incredible story related to the Hearst brand happened to E. Gill, a reporter for the Sunday Times newspaper. Gill had an old portrait of Joseph Stalin by unknown artist. He said that the portrait “hung above the desk and helped in especially difficult cases”; at one time £200 was paid for it. In February 2007, Gill approached Christie's with an offer to put the portrait up for a regular midweek auction. The auction house refused, saying that it does not sell either Hitler or Stalin.

Well, then we would be happy to take it.

Gill called Damien Hirst and asked him to draw a red nose for Stalin in his portrait. Hirst did just that, adding his signature under the nose at the same time. In this condition, Christie's accepted the portrait for sale and provided it with an estimate of 8-12 thousand pounds. There were many people willing to buy the portrait, and seventeen offers later, when the auctioneer's hammer finally came down, the price of the painting was 140 thousand pounds. After all, it bears Hirst's signature.

Hirst's latest project, which caused a lot of noise, is an image of a human skull in life size; the skull itself is copied from the skull of a European, about 35 years old, who died sometime between 1720 and 1810; real teeth are inserted into the skull. Hirst purchased the prototype skull itself from one of the Islington taxidermy shops. The skull is set with 8,601 industrial diamonds weighing a total of 1,100 carats; they cover it completely, like pavement (see photo). The sculpture is called “For the Love of God,” or simply “For God’s Sake”; It seems that these were precisely the words that Hearst’s mother uttered when she heard about the topic of the project. Hirst says his skull continues the tradition of memento mori - skulls in ancient paintings, which were supposed to remind of death and the frailty of all things. It's also a nod to Aztec tradition, with Hearst now spending a third of every year at his second home in Mexico City. He emphasizes that what the buyer is getting is not just a bejeweled skull, but rather context - and, I think, a serious security issue.

In the center of the forehead of the skull is a large pale pink diamond of 52.4 carats of standard brilliant cut; they say he's worth £4 million - although the figures vary. Hirst once said it cost him £12 million to make the skull; his business manager Frank Dunphy put the figure at £15 million. It was made by craftsmen from the jewelry firm Bemley & Skinner on Bond Street, and Hirst himself provided creative direction. It is claimed that this was the largest order received by British jewelers after the Crown Jewels; the skull contains three times more diamonds than the imperial crown. The finished skull was exhibited in June 2007 in London gallery White Cube in Mayfair; The exhibition was called “The Incredible.” The diamond-studded skull was mounted upstairs in a darkened room and was illuminated only by the beams of several narrowly focused lamps: spectators were admitted at a time, in groups of ten people and for no more than five minutes.

The work was put up for sale for £50 million, which Frank Dunphy described as "cheap". Cheap or not, such a price was bound to make headlines. White Cube also offered limited edition silkscreens of the skull, priced at £900,000 and £10,000; those that are more expensive were made using diamond chips.

In September 2007, ten weeks after its appearance in public, the skull was purchased by a group of investors, as the same Frank Dunphy said, “at full price, and in cash.” Hirst retained a 24% stake, so investors had to pay £38 million for the rest. The price - 50 million pounds - immediately made diamond skull the most expensive work by a living author. Among other things, the deal obliges investors to display the skull in museums for two years. The buyers themselves say that they intend to resell Hirst’s work later.

It is not surprising that White Cube considers Hirst to be the most skillful marketer among artists around the world. No work of art other than For the Love of God had ever been written about in hundreds of publications in the year before its creation. Artist Dinos Chapman called the skull the work of genius - but genius not in art, but in marketing.

What does all this tell us? Firstly, about the fact that today it does not matter whether a work was actually created by hand famous master or not; It is enough for the branded artist to make a conceptual contribution to it and for the work to be associated with his name. The foundation of Damien Hirst's success is a strong brand and production with serious quality control. The dot painting signed by Hirst is of considerable value; the same picture of his assistant Rachel is worth nothing. In addition, it turns out that the uniqueness of a work of art is not as important as previously thought. The second version of the shark also brought very good money.

Now, at the age of forty-two, Damien Hirst surpasses any living artist in wealth, fame and, perhaps, power. He lives at Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire with his wife Maya Norman and three children. When money became a central part of existence, both Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali lost some of their creative gifts. Will this happen to Hearst? He says that he will stop producing paintings with butterflies, with colored circles and paintings of rotation, because they do not bark anything to him creative development, although they generate income. He will continue to work on photorealistic paintings and will make at least one more shark.

What does Hearst owe his position and high prices to: talent or brand? Why is he famous? Because his work shocks and thereby holds the public's attention? Because Charles Saatchi paid for Physical Impossibility high price and thereby glorified the artist? Or is he famous simply because he is famous? Is he truly a social commentator offering viewers deep reflections on death and decay? It is unlikely that there will be at least two critics who would answer these questions in the same way. One thing is clear: Hirst's work and talent in marketing and branding cannot be ignored. His brand is generating fame, and his art is attracting people who might otherwise never go see contemporary art. In addition, his art generates a lot of poisonous and angry comments in the media.

Jerry Saltz says: “We laugh at Hearst, at his dealers and his collectors; we say that they have bad taste and a wrong value system. They make fun of our old-fashionedness and moneyless grumbling. We don't tell each other anything new. The only thing that matters is the art of always winning." When I asked one of the Christie's auctioneers a question about the values, he shrugged: “Would I buy a Hirst? No. But we do not dictate or impose tastes, they are created by the market - we only sell works of art under the hammer.”

A 16.5 meter tall statue of a headless demon fills the atrium of Palazzo Grassi

For the first time in history, both Venetian exhibition spaces of the collector François Pinault are given over to one exhibition. And they were occupied by none other than Damien Hirst, one of the most famous artists of our time. The details of the exhibition were kept secret until the very opening: it was only known that new project The author has been cooking for the last 10 years.

Damien Hirst, "Hydra and Kali" (two versions) and "Hydra and Kali underwater (underwater photography by Christoph Gehrigk)." Photo: rudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

On Sunday, April 9, the public finally had the opportunity to attend the Venice exhibition of the British Damien Hirst. He created exhibits for her under cover of secrecy over the course of last decade.

"Kronos Devouring His Children"
Photo: Andrea Merola / ANSA / AP / Scanpix / LETA

“Treasures from the wreck of the Incredible are located in both palaces of the Pino Foundation - Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. This is the first time in history that both centers have given space to one artist.

The exhibition is presented as a multi-layered labyrinth of treasures from a ship that sank 2,000 years ago and was only discovered in 2008 (coincidentally, the previous year of Hirst's career peak).

Damien Hirst, “Hydra and Kali” (fragment). Photo: Andrea Merola/AP

Damien Hirst

51-year-old Damien Hirst is considered the richest living artist in the world. He is also the most prominent representative of the group “Young British Artists” (Britart), which has dominated the art of Foggy Albion for the last quarter of a century.

Hirst's work "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living" (1991), representing a tiger shark in an aquarium with formaldehyde, is a symbol of this unification.

Treasures of the Wreck of the Incredible: Damien Hirst Exhibition at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana Center for Contemporary Art, Venice. Photo: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd

“Treasures from the wreck of the Incredible is a multi-layered labyrinth of sculptures, historical objects, photographs and video footage of the “discovery” and “rescue” of the priceless cargo.

"Two Garudas"

According to legend, the ship sank off the coast East Africa.

"Demon with a Cup"
Photo: Andrea Merola / EPA / Scanpix / LETA

On board was an extensive art collection belonging to a freed slave named Sif Amotan II.

The collection included artifacts from all civilizations known at that time and was headed to the museum island, where it was to be displayed. The ship sank, and all its valuables rested serenely in the depths of the sea until 2008. Now these treasures appear before us.

Damien Hirst, “Five Naked Greek Women”, “Five Antique Torsos”, “Naked Greek Woman” (three versions).

Each exhibit at the exhibition was made in triplicate. In the first version, it looks like a treasure raised from the seabed (“Coral” in Hirst’s language); in the second - as a rescued relic restored by modern restorers (“Treasure”); and in the third - as a reproduction of a pseudo-historical object (“Copy”).

Damien Hirst, "Cyclops Skull" and "Divers Study Cyclops Skull (Underwater Photography)."
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

Damient Hirst, Skull of the Cyclops.
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd

Damien Hirst, "View of Katya Ishtar Yo-landi."
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

There are huge bronze warrior goddesses, unique marble busts and skulls of Cyclops, prayer figurines, tombs, tables, urns, display cases with shields, precious jewelry and coins.

Sculpture at the exhibition “Treasures of the Incredible Shipwreck”
Photo: Awakening/Getty Images

Hirst used a variety of costly materials - malachite, gold, lapis and jade - to create a museum-quality collection of artifacts evocative of ancient world.

Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

Damien Hirst, The Severed Head of Medusa.
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

Damien Hirst, "Sorrow".
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

For added verisimilitude, many works are decorated with white worms and “corals” of incredible colors. The theme of the shipwreck is complemented by large-format photographs and very realistic video footage of divers working off the coast of the Zanzibar archipelago.

According to Artnet.com, special rescue ships were hired to lower the giant bronze statues to the bottom of the Indian Ocean and then raise them.

Damien Hirst, Hydra and Kali Discovered by Four Divers.
Photo: Christoph Gerigk © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

Damien Hirst, "The Stone Calendar".
Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Damien Hirst, "The Unknown Pharaoh" (fragment). The model for this work was clearly the American singer, rapper, producer, musician and clothing designer Pharrell Williams. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

It is worth noting that in all this carefully designed surroundings the faces of musician Pharrell Williams, model Kate Moss, singers Rihanna and Yolandi Visser flash...

Bust of Tadukheppa, the younger wife Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III
Photo: Miguel Medina / AFP / Scanpix / LETA

Not to mention the Mickey Mouse statue in Punta della Dogana. Damien Hirst himself appears in the bronze work "Bust of the Collector Sif Amotan II", hinting that he is not only a creator, but also a collector of works of art.

Damien Hirst, “Sphinx” (version “Coral”); below - Damien Hirst, “Sphinx” (version “Treasure”).
Both photos: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

According to the New York Times, major dealers - such as the Gagosian Gallery or the White Cube - have already bought some of the works at prices ranging from 500 thousand to 5 million dollars per copy. However, like most of the facts in the exhibition, this information is hidden under a veil of secrecy.

Damien Hirst’s exhibition “Treasures from the Wreck of the Incredible” will be one of the central events of the Venice Biennale and will last until December 3, 2017.

There is an opinion that an artist can be either extremely rich or extremely poor. This can be applied to the person who will be discussed in this article. His name is and he is one of the richest living artists.

If you believe the Sunday Times, then according to their estimates, this artist was the richest in the world in 2010, and his fortune was estimated at 215 million pounds sterling.

The work of Damien Hirst

In modern art, this person occupies the role of “the face of death.” This is partly due to the fact that he uses materials that he is not used to using to create works of art. Among them, it is worth noting paintings of dead insects, parts of dead animals in formaldehyde, a skull with real teeth, etc.

His works evoke shock, disgust and delight in people at the same time. Collectors from all over the world are willing to pay huge sums of money for this.

The artist was born in 1965 in a city called Bristol. His father was a mechanic and left the family when his son was 12 years old. Damian's mother worked in a consulting office and was an amateur artist.

The future “face of death” in contemporary art led an asocial lifestyle. He was arrested twice for shoplifting. But despite this, the young creator studied at the Leeds School of Art, and then entered a London college called Goldsmith College.

This establishment was somewhat innovative. The difference from others was that other schools simply accepted students who did not have enough skills to enter a real college, but Goldsmiths College brought together many talented students and teachers. They had their own program, for which you did not need to be able to draw. Recently, this form of training has only gained popularity.

IN student years he loved to visit the morgue and make sketches there. This place laid the foundation for his future themes of works.

From 1990 to 2000, Damien Hirst had problems with drugs and alcohol. During this time, he managed to commit many different pranks while drunk.

Artist's career ladder

Hirst first became interested in the public at an exhibition called "Freeze", which took place in 1988. At this exhibition, at work of this artist Charles Saatchi noticed. This man was a famous tycoon, but, in addition, he was an avid lover of art and collected it. The collector acquired two works by Hirst within a year. After this, Saatchi often purchased works of art from Damien. You can count about 50 works that were purchased by this person.

Already in 1991, the above-mentioned artist decided to hold his own exhibition, which was called In and Out of Love. He did not stop there and held several more exhibitions, one of which was held in

In the same year, his most famous work was produced, it was called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living.” It was created at the expense of Saatchi. The work done by Damien Hirst, the photo of which is located a little lower, was a container with a large one that was immersed in formaldehyde.

In the photo it may seem that the shark is quite short in length, but in fact it was 4.3 meters.

Scandals

In 1994, at an exhibition curated by Damien Hirst, a scandal occurred with an artist under the name Mark Bridger. This incident happened because of one of the works called “Strayed from the Herd,” which represents a sheep immersed in formaldehyde.

Mark came to the exhibition where there was a show of this work art and in one motion poured a can of ink into the container and proclaimed the new name of this work - " Black sheep". Damien Hirst sued him for an act of vandalism. At the trial, Mark tried to explain to the jury that he simply wanted to complement Hirst's work, but the court did not understand him and found him guilty. He could not pay the fine, because at that time was in a poor condition, so he was given only 2 years of probation.After some time, he created his own “Black Sheep”.

Damien's achievements

Happened in 1995 significant date in the artist's life - he was nominated for the Turner Prize. The work entitled “Mother and Child Separated” was the reason why Damien Hirst became the winner of this prize. The artist combined 2 containers in this work. In one of them there was a cow in formaldehyde, and in the second a calf.

The last "loud" work

Most last job, which caused a stir, is on which Damien Hirst spent quite a lot of money. Damien Hirst has never had a work, the photo of which already shows all its high cost.

The title of this installation is “For the Love of God.” It represents a human skull, which is covered with diamonds. 8601 diamonds were used for this creation. The total size of the stones is 1100 carats. This sculpture is the most expensive of all the artist’s. Its price is 50 million pounds sterling. After that, he cast a new skull. This time it was the skull of a baby, which was called "For God's Sake." The material used was platinum and diamonds.

In 2009, after Damian Hirst held his exhibition "Requiem", which caused a stormy wave of discontent from critics, he announced that he had given up installations and would henceforth again engage in ordinary painting.

Outlook on life

Based on the interview, the artist calls himself a punk. He says that he is afraid of death, because real death truly terrible. According to him, it is not death that sells well, but only the fear of death. His views on religion are skeptical.

Text: Ksyusha Petrova

Today in the Moscow Gallery of Gary Tatintsyan opens the first exhibition since 2006 of Damien Hirst, a British artist who is not in vain called “the great and terrible,” comparing him either to the geniuses of the Renaissance or to the sharks from Wall Street. Hirst is considered the richest living author, which only fuels the controversy surrounding his work. Since Charles Saatchi literally stared with his mouth open at the installation “A Thousand Years” - a spectacular and gloomy illustration of everything life path from birth to death, - the buzz around creative methods and aesthetic value Hirst’s work continues unabated, which the artist himself, of course, is only too happy about. We tell you why Hirst’s works are really worthy of the enormous attention they receive, and we try to understand inner world artist - much more ambiguous and subtle than it might seem from the outside.

"Away from the Flock", 1994

Hirst is now fifty-one, and ten years ago he completely gave up smoking, drugs and alcohol - chances are good that his career will last for several decades. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine what could be the next step for an artist of this magnitude - Hirst has already represented his country at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, shot a video for the group Blur, and made the most expensive work of art in the world ( platinum skull inlaid with diamonds), more than one hundred and sixty employees work for him in his workshops (Andy Warhol never dreamed of this with his “Factory”), and his fortune exceeds a billion dollars. The image of a brawler, which made Hirst famous along with his series of preserved animals in alcohol in the 1990s, gradually gave way to a calmer one: although the artist still loves leather pants and rings with skulls, he hasn’t shown off his penis for a long time strangers, as he did in the “years of military glory,” and looks more and more like a successful entrepreneur than a rock star, although in essence he is both.

Hirst explains his extraordinary commercial success by the fact that he had more motivation to earn money than the other members of the Young British Artists association he headed (while still studying at Goldsmiths, Hirst organized legendary exhibition“Freeze”, which attracted the attention of eminent gallery owners to young artists). Hirst’s childhood cannot be called prosperous and happy: he never saw his biological father, his stepfather left the family when the boy was twelve, and his Catholic mother desperately resisted her son’s attempts to become part of the then very young punk subculture.

Nevertheless, she supported his art pursuits - perhaps out of despair, because Hirst was a difficult teenager and all subjects, except drawing, were difficult for him. Damien regularly got caught with petty shoplifting and other unpleasant stories, but at the same time he managed to make sketches in the local morgue and study medical atlases, which were the source of inspiration for his favorite author, the dark expressionist Francis Bacon. Bacon's paintings greatly influenced Hirst: the grin of the famous shark preserved in alcohol is reminiscent of Bacon's recurring motif of his mouth open in a scream, rectangular aquariums are the cages and pedestals that are constantly found on Bacon's canvases.

A few years ago, Hirst, who had never performed in the field of traditional painting, presented to the public a series of his own paintings, clearly inspired by the works of Bacon, and failed miserably: critics called Hirst’s new works a pathetic parody of the master’s paintings and compared them to “the daub of a freshman who doesn’t give in.” great hopes." These scathing reviews may have hurt the artist's feelings, but they clearly did not affect his productivity: with the help of assistants doing all the routine work, Hirst continues his endless series of canvases with multi-colored dots, "rotational" paintings created by spinning paint cans in a centrifuge, installations with tablets and on an industrial scale produces well-selling works.

← “Untitled AAA”, 1992

Although Hirst always said that money was primarily a means of producing art on a large scale, it cannot be denied that he had an extraordinary talent for entrepreneurship - equal, if not superior in scale, to artistic talent. The Briton, not known for his modesty, believes that everything he touches turns to gold - and this seems to be true: even in the depressed year of 2008, a two-day auction of his works at Sotheby’s organized by Hirst himself exceeded all expectations and broke Picasso’s auction record. Hirst, who looks like a simple guy from Leeds, is not shy about making money on objects that seem alien to high art - be it souvenir skateboards for six thousand dollars or the fashionable London restaurant Pharmacy, decorated in the spirit of the artist’s “pharmacy” series. Buyers of Hirst's works are not only Oxford graduates from good families, but also a new layer of collectors - those who came from the bottom and earned a fortune from scratch, like the artist himself.

Hirst's star status and the dizzying cost of his work often make it difficult to discern their essence - which is a shame, because the ideas contained in them are no less impressive than sawed-up cow carcasses in formaldehyde. Even in what seems to be one hundred percent kitsch, Hirst has an irony: his famous diamond-studded skull, sold for one hundred million dollars, is called “For the Love of God” (an expression that can be literally translated as “In the name of the love of God” is used like the curse of a tired person: “Well, for God’s sake!”). According to the artist, he was prompted to create this work by the words of his mother, who once asked: “God have mercy, what will you do next?” (“For the love of God, what are you going to do next?”). Cigarette butts, laid out in a display case with manic pedantry, are a way of calculating life time: like animals in formaldehyde, and a diamond skull, referring to classic plot memento mori, smoked cigarettes remind us of the frailty of existence, which our minds are unable to grasp, no matter how hard we try. And multi-colored mugs, and cigarette butts, and shelves with medicines are an attempt to organize what separates us from death, to express the acuteness of being in this body and in this consciousness, which can end at any moment.

"Claustrophobia/Agoraphobia", 2008

In his interviews, Hirst increasingly says that in his youth he felt eternal, but now the topic of death for him has many other nuances. “Mate, my oldest son, Connor, is sixteen. Several of my friends have already died, and I’m getting old,” explains the artist. “I’m not the same bastard who tried to yell at the whole world anymore.” A convinced atheist, Hirst regularly returns to religious subjects, mercilessly dissecting them and stating over and over again that the existence of God is as impossible as “death in the mind of the living.”

A series of works with living and dead butterflies embody the artist’s thoughts about beauty and its fragility. This idea is most clearly expressed in the installation “Falling in and Out of Love” (“In and Out of Love”): several thousand butterflies hatch from cocoons, live and die in the gallery space, and their bodies stuck to the canvases remain as a reminder of the fragility of beauty. Like the works of the old masters, it is advisable to see Hirst’s works in person at least once: both the memetic “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living” and “Mother and Child Separated” produce a completely different impression if you stand next to them. These and other works from the Natural History series are not provocation for the sake of provocation, but thoughtful and lyrical statements about the fundamental questions of human existence.

As Hirst himself says, in art, as in everything we do, there is only one idea - the search for an answer to the main questions of philosophy: where did we come from, where are we going and does this make sense? A shark preserved in alcohol, inspired by Hirst’s childhood memories of the horror movie “Jaws,” confronts our consciousness with a paradox: why do we feel uneasy next to the carcass of a deadly animal, because we know that it cannot harm us? Is what we feel part of the irrational fear of death that always looms somewhere on the edge of consciousness - and if so, how does it affect our actions and daily life?

Hirst has been repeatedly criticized for his creative methods and harsh statements: for example, in 2002, the artist had to make a public apology for comparing the September 11 terrorist attack to the artistic process. The living classic condemned Hirst for not making his work with his own hands, but using the labor of assistants, and critic Julian Spalding even coined the parody term “Con Art,” which can be translated as “conceptualism for suckers.” It cannot be said that all the indignant cries against Hirst were groundless: the artist was repeatedly accused of plagiarism, and was also accused of artificially inflating prices for his works, not to mention statements by the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights, which was concerned about the conditions of keeping butterflies in the museum . Perhaps the most absurd conflict associated with the name of the scandalous Briton is his confrontation with the sixteen-year-old artist Cartrain, who was selling collages with photographs of Hirst’s work “In the Name of the Love of God.” The multimillionaire artist sued the teenager for two hundred pounds, which he earned from his collages, which caused violent indignation among representatives of the art market.

← “Enchanted”, 2008

Hirst's conceptualism is not as soulless as it might seem: indeed, the artist gives birth to a plan, and dozens of his nameless assistants are involved in its implementation - however, practice shows that Hirst really cares about the fate of his works. The case of that same shark preserved in alcohol, which began to decompose, has become one of the favorite jokes of the art world. Charles Saatchi decided to save the work by stretching the skin of the long-suffering fish onto an artificial frame, but Hirst rejected the redone work, saying that it no longer made such a terrifying impression. As a result, the already damaged installation was sold for twelve million dollars, but at the insistence of the artist the shark was replaced.

Hirst’s friend and YBA colleague Matt Collishaw describes him as “a hooligan and an esthete,” and while the hooligan part is clear, the aesthetic side is often forgotten: perhaps Hirst’s extraordinary artistic flair can only be appreciated in exhibitions of works from his extensive