Hurst's work. Damien Hirst - one of the richest artists during his lifetime
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 of prosperity was in 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.
YBA is united not only by studying at the prestigious Goldsmiths College, but also by the first joint exhibition Freeze, which took place 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 entitled “£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 modern 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, largest museum Sovriska along with the New York MoMA and the Paris Pompidou Center. 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. Here is a kaleidoscope, like a stained glass window in a Gothic cathedral, and a grandiose installation “Falling in 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 the 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.
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.
During his 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 this work of art was being shown and in one motion he 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.
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 magazine New Yorker
Briton Damien Hirst, creator of a stuffed shark worth $12 million, is one of those rare artists, about which we can rightfully say: they changed our understanding of 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 of working on construction sites in London, he tried to enter 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 that 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 open mouth 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 has shrunk in the meantime and the pile of dead flies has 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 free application. 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 oppose conceptual art like shark stuff, as well as 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. The 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 after the names of medications. The reference to medicine" makes you think of powerful means influences 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. Everyone wrote about this case British newspapers. 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 the old theme of 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. The titles of such works, as always with Hirst, are meaningful and should attract additional attention, such as “Isolated elements floating in one direction for the sake of understanding.”
Finally, the last category of 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. Hirst also imitates fashion designers in that he 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 is known to increase the price of ordinary things, so social activity 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. The butterfly painting “Full of Love” was sold to London dealer Timothy Taylor for £364,000; 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 every year British artist who have not reached 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). A note was attached to the picture 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, associated with the Hearst brand, happened to E. Gill, a reporter for the Sunday Times. Gill had old portrait Joseph Stalin by an 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 a life-size image of a human skull; 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, serious problem ensuring security.
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 at London's White Cube gallery 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 rays 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 between £900 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 the diamond skull the most expensive work 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, that today it does not matter whether a work was really created by the hand of a 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 a high price for “Physical Impossibility” 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 generates fame and his art attracts people who might otherwise never go see it. modern Art. In addition, his art generates in means mass media Lots of poisonous and angry comments.
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.”
Damien Stephen Hirst Damien Hirst; 7 June 1965, Bristol, UK) - English artist, entrepreneur, art collector, and the most celebrated figure of the Young British Artists group, who have dominated the art scene since the 1990s.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father was a mechanic and car salesman who left the family when Damien was 12 years old. His mother, Mary, was an amateur artist. She quickly lost control of her son, who was arrested twice for shoplifting.
Damien first studied at art school in Leeds, then, after two years working on construction sites in London, he tried to enroll in Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and some college in Wales. As a result, he was accepted to Goldsmith College (1986-1989). In the 1980s, Goldsmith College was considered innovative: unlike other schools that accepted students who could not get into a real college, Goldsmith School attracted many talented students and inventive teachers. Goldsmith introduced an innovative program that did not require students to draw or paint. Over the past 30 years, this model of education has become widespread throughout the world.
As a student at the school, Hirst regularly visited the morgue. Later he would notice that many of the themes of his works originated there.
In July 1988, Hirst curated the acclaimed Freeze exhibition in the empty Port of London Authority building in London Docks; The exhibition featured the works of 17 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.
Freeze became the starting point for several YBA artists; In addition, the famous collector and patron of the arts, Charles Saatchi, drew the attention of Hirst. Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1989.
In 1990, with friend Carl Friedman, he organized another exhibition, Gamble, 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. Saatchi purchased this creation and offered Hirst money to create future works.
Thus, with Saatchi’s money, in 1991, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of a Living Person” was created, which is an aquarium with a tiger shark, the length of which reached 4.3 meters. The work cost Saatchi £50,000. The shark was caught by an authorized fisherman in Australia and had a price tag of £6,000. As a result, Hirst was nominated for the Turner Prize, which was awarded to Greenville Davey. The shark itself was sold in December 2004 to collector Steve Cohen for $12 million (£6.5 million).
First international recognition Hirst came to the artist in 1993 at the Venice Biennale. His work "Mother and Child Divided" featured parts of a cow and calf placed in separate aquariums containing formaldehyde. In 1997, the artist’s autobiography “I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now” was published.
Hirst's latest project, which caused a lot of noise, is a life-size image of a human skull; the skull itself is copied from the skull of a European, about 35 years old, who died sometime between 1720 and 1910; real teeth are inserted into the skull. The creation is encrusted with 8,601 industrial diamonds weighing a total of 1,100 carats; they cover it completely, like pavement. In the center of the forehead of the skull is a large pale pink diamond of 52.4 carats of standard brilliant cut.
The sculpture is called For the Love of God and is the most expensive sculpture by a living author - £50 million.
CREATION
Death - central theme in his works.
Most famous series artist - Natural History: dead animals (including a shark, sheep and cow) in formaldehyde. A landmark work is “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”: a tiger shark in an aquarium with formaldehyde. this work became a symbol of graphic work in British art in the 1990s and a symbol of Britart throughout the world.
Unlike sculptures and installations that practically do not deviate from the theme of death, Damien Hirst’s paintings at first glance look cheerful, elegant and life-affirming. The artist’s main painting series are:
"Spots"- Spot paintings (1988 - before today) - a geometric abstraction of colored circles, usually of the same size, not repeating in color and arranged in a lattice. In some jobs these rules are not followed. The scientific names of various toxic, narcotic or stimulant substances are taken as names for most of the works in this series: “Aprotinin”, “Butyrophenone”, “Ceftriaxone”, “Diamorphine”, “Ergocalciferol”, “Minoxidil”, “Oxalacetic Acid”, “Vitamin” C", "Zomepirac" and the like.
"Rotations"- Spin paintings (1992 - until today) - painting in the genre of abstract expressionism. To produce this series, the artist or his assistants pour or drip paint onto a rotating canvas.
"Butterflies"- Butterfly Color Paintings (1994-2008) - abstract assemblage. The paintings are created by gluing dead butterflies onto a freshly painted canvas (no glue is used, the butterflies stick to the uncured paint themselves). The canvas is evenly painted with one color, and the butterflies used have a complex, bright color.
"Kaleidoscopes"- Kaleidoscope Paintings (2001-2008) - here, with the help of butterflies stuck close to each other, the artist creates symmetrical patterns similar to kaleidoscope patterns.
It's Great to Be Alive, 2002 
Despite the fact that museums sometimes decorate their children's corners with butterfly paintings by Damien Hirst, butterflies in the artist's work quite definitely play the role of symbols of death.
Butterflies are one of the central objects for the expression of Hirst's creativity; he uses them in all possible forms: images in paintings, photographs, installations. So he used for one of his installations “Falling in and Out of Love” (In and Out of Love), held at Tate Modern from April to September 2012 in London, 9000 thousand live butterflies, which gradually died during the course of the exhibition. of this event. After this incident, representatives of the animal welfare charity RSPCA harshly criticized the artist.
Damien Stephen Hirst (English: Damien Hirst; 7 June 1965, Bristol, UK) is an English artist, entrepreneur, art collector, and the most famous figure of the Young British Artists group, dominating the art scene since the 1990s.
According to the Sunday Times, Hirst is the richest living artist in the world, with an estimated fortune of £215 million in 2010. At the beginning of his career, Damien worked closely with the famous collector Charles Saatchi, but growing differences led to a break in 2003.
Death is a central theme in his works. The artist's most famous series is Natural History: dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) in formaldehyde. A landmark work is “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”: a tiger shark in an aquarium with formaldehyde. This work has become a symbol of graphic work in British art in the 1990s and a symbol of Britart throughout the world.
Butterflies are one of the central objects for the expression of Hirst's creativity; he uses them in all possible forms: images in paintings, photographs, installations. Thus, for one of his installations, “In and Out of Love,” which took place at Tate Modern from April to September 2012 in London, 9,000 thousand live butterflies, which gradually died during the course of this event. After this incident, representatives of the RSPCA Animal Welfare Charitable Fund subjected the artist to harsh criticism.
In September 2008, Hirst sold full meeting Beautiful Inside My Head Forever fetched £111 million ($198 million) at Sotheby's, breaking the record for a single-artist auction.
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father was a mechanic and car salesman who left the family when Damien was 12 years old. His mother, Mary, was an amateur artist. She quickly lost control of her son, who was arrested twice for shoplifting. Damien first studied at art school in Leeds, then, after two years working on construction sites in London, he tried to enroll in Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and some college in Wales. He was eventually accepted into Goldsmith College (1986-1989).
In the 1980s, Goldsmith College was considered innovative: unlike other schools that accepted students who could not get into a real college, Goldsmith School attracted many talented students and inventive teachers. Goldsmith introduced an innovative program that did not require students to draw or paint. Over the past 30 years, this model of education has become widespread throughout the world.
As a student at the school, Hirst regularly visited the morgue. Later he would notice that many of the themes of his works originated there.
In July 1988, Hirst curated the acclaimed exhibition Freeze in the empty Port of London Authority building in London Docks; The exhibition featured the works of 17 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.
Freeze became the starting point for several YBA artists; In addition, the famous collector and NATO propaganda curator Charles Saatchi drew attention to Hirst.
Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1989. In 1990, together with friend Carl Friedman, he organized another exhibition, Gamble, 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. Saatchi purchased this creation and offered Hirst money to create future works.
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