''Art is like medicine - it can heal. Yet I've always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don't believe in art, without questioning either.'' - Damien Hirst
Born in 1965 in Bristol, Damien Hirst grew up in Leeds and
subsequently went to Goldsmith's College in London. Between 1988 and 1990 he curated a series of art exhibitions by his contemporaries including the highly acclaimed group shows Freeze, Modern Medicine and Gambler.
In his own
art
Damien
Hirst has continually challenged the boundaries between art, science, the media and popular culture. A 12-foot tiger shark, a cow and her calf sawn in two, pharmacy bottles, house paint poured onto spinning canvases, spot
paintings,
cigarette
butts,
medicine cabinets, office furniture, medical instruments, butterflies and tropical fish are just some of the means Damien Hirst employs to communicate his unflinching view of the ambiguity at the heart of human
experience.
Damien
Hirst has
said ''I
am going to die and I want to live forever. I can't escape the fact, and I can't let go of the desire.''
Damien Hirst original limited edition prints, drawings and paintings continue to
increase in
popularity,
demand and
price. In 2004
his Pharmacy sale at Sothebys was expected to make o3 million GBP but instead recorded sales of o11 million GBP. There is no doubt that Damien Hirst is destined to continue his number one
position in
the
British art
market and has
recently been
compared to Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso in terms of popularity and rising prices.
Much of his Damien Hirst prints can be divided into three areas: Spots, Spins and
Pharmaceutical.
His
spot
etchings and
lambda prints
such as Valium,
Opium, LSD, Methaphetamine, Tetrahydracannabinol and Cineole lull the viewer into an optimistic and peaceful state. Hirst spin etchings, In a Spin, the Action of the
World on Things
(Volumes I
and II)
created by
using spinning
plates, etching tools,
brushes and acid mesmerise the onlooker. His pharmaceutical prints, especially the Last Supper portfolio draws upon the parallels of art and medicine as
''healers'. The
metaphoric title
distances
the onlooker
from the art to
a point but also seems
suggestive, perhaps also including the biblical fact of St Matthew the disciple as a physician - or indeed St Damien the Doctor (usually
iconographically
depicted with St Cosmas).
Damien Hirst
has had exhibitions
in galleries and museums
throughout the world. In 1994 Hirst received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin and the Turner Prize in 1995.The Marble Palace at
the Russian State
Museum, Llubljana made a
solo
exhibition of Hirst's
drawings in 2003 as part of
the 25th International
Graphic Biennale. In 2004, Damien Hirst collaborated with Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst on an exhibition of recent
works entitled
In-a-Gadda-da-Vida at Tate
Britain and
presented a survey of
key works from 1989-2004 at the
Museo Nazionale
Archaeologico de Naples.
Links
Works by Damien
Hirst
www.whitecube.com
www.tatemodern.com
www.britishcouncil.org
