Damien Stephen Hirst (eng. Damien Hirst; June 7, 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.
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. Signature work- “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.
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, he used 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, 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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Today in the section “Art in Five Minutes” we will talk about the most famous artist modernity - Damien Stephen Hirst. We will deal with a shark in formaldehyde using a Mobius strip, find out how medieval art resonates with a diamond skull, and embark on a transgression to find out whether there is life in death.
Reference: Damien Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur, art collector, and the most celebrated figure of the Young British Artists group, dominating the art scene since the 1990s. Born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol, UK.
What is the central theme of Hirst's works?
Short: Death.
More details: The fundamental confrontation between the denial of death and the awareness of its inevitability is the central theme of the artist. Hirst doesn't walk around, he goes inside death itself. To thoroughly explore the topic, in his youth the artist went to the anatomical theater to make sketches and worked part-time in the morgue.
Since Hirst has many works related to death, we will look at a specific installation “A Thousand Years” from 1990 - one of the author’s most significant works. It is a double combined box: in the first enclosure there is a cow's head and an electric fly swatter, in the second there are larvae and flies. There are 4 holes cut in the partition between these cubes. The flies, flying into the first cube, immediately divided into 2 different groups: the first flew straight to the lamps and, touching them, immediately died, and the second part of the flies tried to take place on the head of the dead cow.
The artist talks about it: “I remember sitting with Gary Hume once when I was working on this installation, he asked: "What are you working on now?" I replied, "Well, I have a glass box, a cow's head, worms and flies. All I have to do is find a fly swatter that will kill them all." He looked at me as if I were crazy. And I thought, "Great. This is a great way to explain it as something crazy - you just explain it to someone so that they already have an opinion. And this is despite the fact that they have no idea what it really is, so that they cannot be prepared for what they see."
This installation refers us to Donald Judd, the father of minimalism. The artist refuses traditional beauty, figurativeness, and any sentimental content.
In this one work, Hirst captured life cycle, he showed how orderly the chaos of life and death is.
It must be said that sometimes Hirst gets carried away: the Briton once called the New York terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 a work of art, for which he subsequently had to apologize.
I will die - and I want to live forever. I cannot escape death, and I cannot escape the desire to live. I want to see at least a glimpse of what it is like to die.
Hirst the richest artist in the world?
Briefly: D A.
Read more: P at least that’s what all Western publications say. The artist's total fortune is estimated at one billion dollars. Hirst sold the complete "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" collection at Sotheby's for £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a single-artist auction. Also on the list of the richest artists are Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns. By the way, the approximate salary of Hirst's assistants is $32,000.
What is the name of the style in which the artist works?
Short: Neoconceptualism.
More details: Neoconceptualism or postconceptualism is a direction that represents modern stage development of conceptualism of the 60-70s. Neo-conceptualism emerged in the United States and Europe in the late 1970s. Neoconceptualism, like conceptual art, is first and foremost an art of questions. Conceptual art today continues to raise fundamental questions not only about the definition of art itself, but also about politics, media and society. Neoconceptualism is mainly associated with the activities of the Young British Artists, who loudly declared themselves in the 1990s.
Major Events
1991: Charles Saatchi finances Damien Hirst and the following year the Saatchi Gallery exhibits his work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” - a shark in formaldehyde.
1993: Vanessa Beecroft holds her first performance in Milan.
1999: Tracey Emin has been nominated for the Turner Prize. Part of her exhibition is the installation "My Bed".
2001: Martin Creed wins the Turner Prize for "The Lights Going On and Off", an empty room in which lights turn on and off.
2005: Simon Starling receives the Turner Prize for the Shedboatshed, a wooden structure he sailed on the Rhine.
Does Hirst have paintings?
Short: Yes.
More details: Hirst was never focused on painting, even in his early days attending the pioneering Goldsmiths College in the 1980s. Unlike other schools, which attracted 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.
But Hirst still has three uses of paint.
First- these are spot paintings, colored circles that grow from Jeff Koons. This project is still ongoing. One day, an artist opened exactly the same exhibitions in several cities around the world, the entire space of which was hung with paintings with multi-colored circles.
Second- this is a spin painting, which involves a rotating circle on which paint is poured, so the paint itself paints a dynamic canvas. The most famous creation in this style was the entire Olympic Stadium. Hirst was commissioned to decorate the arena and poured paint in the shape of the British flag to celebrate the opening of the Olympics. But as we see, neither the first nor the second is painting, it is the use of paints without drawing.
People who criticize modern art forget that all art was once modern.
Third- these are works in the style of Francis Bacon. Starting out, Hirst himself said that he would not paint, because his paintings would be absolutely secondary; he was aware of his own epigonism. But, for some reason, he changed his mind and brought his painting to the personal exhibition “Requiem”, which was shown here at the Pinchuk Art Center in 2009. In addition to old works, the artist exhibited a new painting series called “Skull paintings”. They became the main target for sarcastic invective from critics. “It feels like what the viewer is seeing is a pastiche of Bacon, made by a student,”- one of them remarked. Many of the critics contemporary art It is believed that once, in the early 90s, Hirst was the undisputed leader of New British Art and generally stood at the vanguard of modern art, but those times are long gone, and now yesterday’s avant-garde artist has turned into a supplier of ultra-expensive kitsch - just to his taste and taste minds of Eastern European and Asian oligarchs, and Hirst’s paintings are simply helpless.
Hirst also has a painting “For Mom”. It depicts fruits and flowers, without allusions, reminiscences or riddles. Just fruits and flowers. Because ever since he became an artist, his mother always reproached him that his son could not draw anything “normal.” So he wrote, really, what could be more normal than fruits and flowers?
It recently emerged that Hirst locks himself in his garden shed and secretly paints there. "Animals in formaldehyde no longer shock audiences; they are much more surprised when you pick up your brushes and canvas and go back to basics."- he commented on his shameful contemporary artist classes.
Genius or fiction?
Briefly: K As it was said in holy scripture, “if he dies, we will find out.”
More details: Hirst is unimaginably rich and successful, and he is also a contemporary - this is an ideal formula that generates many discussions around the work of the Briton.
Some critics consider the artist an artificially created phenomenon with a bag of money instead of a head. Others, as we have already said, revile his painting, pointing to his imitation of Bacon. But Julian Spalding went the furthest, he considers Hirst a fiction and simply a non-artist, ironically calling him a con-artist, which on the one hand speaks of deceptiveness, since “con” in English means “to fool”, and on the other hand, is an abbreviation from the word "conceptualism", which is funny. By the way, "con" in English language means another obscene meaning, something like “member”, that’s what Bill Gates was called at school, so if you try to create a folder on your desktop with that name, you won’t succeed. Try it now.
Critics from the shore where the grass is greener find Hirst a genius who distills the pure spirit of art from the mash of everyday life with the help of ingenuity and advanced technology. There are many arguments for this, the most significant of which (referring to historical discourse) is that he managed to create a completely new art from the most ancient theme of “death”. On the other hand, during Hirst's retrospective exhibition at MOMA, attendance increased by 20 percent, what other arguments are needed?
The Briton is so popular and controversial that other artists create art out of him. Spanish sculptor Eugenio Merino created an object depicting the suicide of Damien Hirst: a doll similar to the British artist kneels in a glass box with a pistol pressed to his bloody temple. The object, as The Daily Telegraph writes, is called "4 the Love of Go(l)d". Thus, it plays on the name of one of the most famous works Hirst - a skull encrusted with diamonds ("For the Love of God"), and the word "gold" - "gold": the Briton is considered one of the most expensive artists in the world. Merino claims that he is a fan of Hirst’s work. He says this about his object: “Of course, this is a joke, but this is the paradox: if he [Hirst] commits suicide, then his works will become even more expensive.”
Whatever the critics of this world may say, The Guardian correspondent said it best: “In an age of creation, in a world ruled by eclecticism and money, Hirst is “the artist we deserve.”
Question from PR-manager Anastasia Kosyreva
What is the difference between a shark in Hurst's formaldehyde and an animal in formaldehyde in biology lessons? Why is the first art and the second is not?
Short:“Because the first is in the gallery, and the second is not” (c) Hirst
More details: Hirst, of course, jokes, he is generally a very funny person, this can be seen in all his interviews. But we'll talk seriously.
The installation “Tiger Shark in Fomaldehyde” is called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living.” The shark was caught by an Australian fisherman and sold to the artist for $9,500. And the installation was sold in 2004 to collector Steve Cohen for $12 million. Being near this shark, I remember the title of Jonathan Foer’s novel “Extremely Close, Incredibly Loud.” The ugly mouth of the shark is wide open, this creates the effect of a growl, a scream, as a symbol of the pain of dying. The shark's gaping mouth refers to the paintings of Hirst's favorite artist, Francis Bacon. In general, Hirst could have taken any animal, but he chose a shark not to shock society; a shark is a source of danger and a symbol of death. The shark doubles death: it itself is dead and, at the same time, the bearer of death. The most unusual phenomenon among sharks is intrauterine cannibalism. About 70% of sharks die in brutal battles right in the womb.
But the most important thing in this work is not the shark or formaldehyde. What is important is that this installation is located in a sterile, minimalist space, again continuing the Judd tradition. A constructed scheme of contrast between the abstract and durable form of demonstration and its transitory objective content. Art, “on behalf of” which the form of the showcase acts, fulfills its traditional function here - stopping time.
There is also a conceptual play in this work, in which the object of the image is the same as the image itself. Simply put, death represents death. Such a semantic Mobius strip, when the meaning of a work closes on itself, when the work tells about itself.
Hirst says about his work: "I'm trying to unravel death. It's hard for people to understand their own mortality, and many of my works are about this. My shark is an attempt to describe this feeling, the feeling of irrational fear of death. That's why I used a real shark, so large that it could swallow a person entirely. And I placed it in a container with a liquid of such a size that it would give the viewer goosebumps. And this is not a gloomy look at the world. On the contrary, I hoped that death would serve as an inspiration and a source of energy for the audience.
Question from editor-in-chief Evgenia Lipskaya:
Why did he choose butterflies as his main material? Did he kill them or collect them dead?
Short: 1. On short life It is easier to show the life cycle of a butterfly, and the death of a butterfly is a very clear demonstration of both beauty and horror.
2. He did not kill them with his own hands, but he did not collect them either. Butterflies were brought from "special nurseries" and then died own death in the gallery.
More details: The artist’s most famous installation, where the main characters are butterflies, is called “Falling in and Falling Out of Love.” Butterflies flew freely in the gallery, which also contained dishes with flowers and fruits. Since butterflies are short-lived creatures, they dropped dead right in the middle of the exhibition. They hit the paintings and smeared, thus creating abstract works. The pictures turned out to be beautiful and ominous, since we are talking about dead creatures. Then he went so far as to use real wings of dead butterflies to make stained glass windows for Gothic cathedrals. Initially, visitors did not know that the butterflies were dying over the course of the exhibition; 400 new creatures were introduced every week. When the public learned that 9 thousand butterflies died during the exhibition, they began to attack Hirst. The artist’s opponents particularly emphasized the fact that butterflies could live much longer in their natural habitat, up to nine months. However, Tate representatives had one answer to all the reproaches: conditions were created for the butterflies as close as possible to their habitat. By the way, butterflies were brought in cocoons; they were born at the exhibition and died there.
Initially, these were pupae scattered throughout the room, but after the metamorphosis process was completed, the exotic butterflies that were born flew straight to the huge canvases with fresh flowers. Butterflies stuck to sticky canvases and after a while died, becoming part of the picture. Moreover, on the back of the giant canvases there were attached huge ashtrays filled to the brim with cigarette butts.
There are also the “Butterflies” and “Kaleidoscopes” series, where, in the first case, dead butterflies are glued onto a freshly painted canvas without using glue, and in the second, they are tightly stuck to each other, creating patterns reminiscent of a kaleidoscope.
It should be said that butterflies are not the only insect that Hirst turns into art. He has a job that is made entirely of flies. That is, the canvas is covered as densely as possible by flies, so the artist created his own “black square”.
Question from beauty editor Christina Kilinskaya:
Who bought this skull and for how much?
Short: A consortium that includes Hirst himself, his manager Frank Dunphy, the head of the White Cube gallery and the famous Ukrainian philanthropist Victor Pinchuk for $100 million.
More details: The installation is called “For the Love of God” and represents a human skull made of platinum and encrusted with diamonds. According to Hirst, the name was inspired by the words of his mother when she addressed him with the words: “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” (“Tell me, what will you do next?” For the love of God - literally, a quote from the First Epistle of John: “For this is the love of God” (1 John 5:3)). The skull is made of platinum, like a slightly reduced version of the skull of a 35-year-old European who lived between 1720 and 1810. The entire area of the skull, with the exception of the original teeth, is studded with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. In the center of the forehead is the main element of the composition - a pink pear-shaped diamond. The work cost Hirst £14 million.
In 2007, for investment purposes, a group of investors, which included Hirst himself, his manager Frank Dunphy, the head of the White Cube gallery and the famous Ukrainian philanthropist Victor Pinchuk, bought the skull for 50 million pounds (100 million US dollars). This is a record price paid for a work by a living artist.
“For the Love of the Lord” is a synthesis of kitsch, pop art, classics and the eternal theme of death. The skull is an extremely visual implementation of the classic theme of Western art Vanitas vanitatum - the artist demonstrates that both money and luxury are decay and vanity.
In essence, this work is a rather witty rejoinder from Hirst about his own commercial success: instead of bashfully disguising it, the artist flaunts it - investing in the creation of an object at a cost of 15 million pounds. And the fact that this object is a skull only emphasizes the triumph of the religion of the golden calf in the modern world.
However, the artistic community did not appreciate the self-revealing aspect of the new works of the English artist. In an era of ethically and politically concerned art, Damien Hirst has become an odious figure, and the proper insider reaction to the mention of his name is a grimace of irony, irritation and boredom.
Hirst himself says that "this object symbolizes the wealth and value of life" and adds "By the way, diamond skulls are also about how decorating death is a great way to come to terms with this idea."
3 April 2012, 17:53My faith in art is not much different from religious fanaticism. We all need something to navigate in the dark.
It was he who came up with the idea of encrusting human skulls with diamonds and making art objects from the corpses of cows. Damien Hirst(Damien Hirst) is a British artist and collector who first gained fame in the late 1980s. Member of the "Young" group British artists", is considered the most expensive artist in the world and the richest in the UK according to The Sunday Times (2010). His works are included in the collections of many museums and galleries: Tate, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, Ulrecht Central Museum, etc. 
Damien Hirst was born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol, UK. Much of his childhood was spent in Leeds. After his parents' divorce, when Damien was 12 years old, he began to lead a more free lifestyle and was arrested twice for petty theft. However, Hirst was interested in drawing from childhood and graduated from Leeds Art College, and later continued his studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London (1986–1989). Some of his drawings were made in the morgue; the theme of death subsequently became the main one in the artist’s work. 
Damien Hirst is in a civil marriage with designer Maya Norman, and the couple has three sons. Hirst spends most of his time with his family at his home in Devon in northern England. 
Dream, 2008 Anthem, 2000 In 1988, Damien Hirst organized an exhibition of Goldsmith students (Richard and Simon Patterson, Sarah Lucas, Fiona Rae, Angus Fairhurst, etc., later they began to be called “Young British Artists”) Freeze, which attracted public attention. Here the artists, and above all Hirst, were noticed by the famous collector Charles Saatchi. 
Lost Love, 2000 In 1990, Damien Hirst took part in the Modern Medicine and Gambler exhibitions. He presented his work “A Thousand Years”: a glass container with the head of a cow, covered with corpse flies, this work was bought by Saatchi. From this time on, Damien and the collector began to work closely together until 2003. “I will die - and I want to live forever. I cannot escape death, and I cannot escape the desire to live. I want to see at least a glimpse of what it’s like to die.” In 1991, Hirst’s first solo exhibition in London, In and Out of Love, took place, and in 1992, the Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which featured Hirst’s work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living”: Tiger Shark in formaldehyde. This work simultaneously brought the artist fame even among those who are far from art, and a nomination for the Turner Prize. In 1993, Hirst took part in the Venice Biennale with the work “Mother and Child Separated”, and a year later he curated the exhibition Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, where he presented his composition “The Lost Sheep” (a dead sheep in formaldehyde), which was renamed "Black Sheep" when the artist poured ink into the aquarium. Damien Hirst received the Turner Prize in 1995. At the same time, the artist presented the installation Two Fucking and Two Watching, representing a decomposing cow and bull. In subsequent years, Hirst's exhibitions were held in London, Seoul, and Salzburg. In 1997, Hirst's autobiographical book "I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now" was published. In 2000, the work “Hymn”, shown at the Art Noise exhibition, was acquired by Saatchi; the sculpture was an anatomical model of the human body more than six meters high. In the same year, the exhibition “Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings” was held, which was visited by about 100 thousand people, all of Hirst’s sculptures were sold. Self-portrait: “Kill yourself, Damien” In 2004, one of Hirst’s most famous works – “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living” – Saatchi sold to another collector, Steve Cohen. Its cost was $12 million. 
"It's very easy to say, 'Well, even I could do that.' The point is that I did “it”
In 2007, Damien Hirst presented the work “For the love of God - a human skull, covered in platinum and studded with diamonds, only the teeth are natural. It was bought by a group of shareholders (including Hirst himself) for 50 million pounds (or $100 million), while the artist himself spent 14 million pounds on its creation. Thus, “For the Love of God” is the most expensive work of art by a living artist. “Investment banker in formaldehyde” Hirst is also a painter; some of his most famous works are the triptychs “Meaning Nothings”, made in the manner of Francis Bacon (some of them were sold before the opening of the exhibition in 2009), the Spots series (multi-colored dots on white backgrounds reminiscent of pop art), Spins (concentric circles), Butterflies (canvases using butterfly wings). Damien Hirst also acts as a designer: in 2009, he used his painting “Beautiful, Father Time, Hypnotic, Exploding Vortex, The Hours Painting” to design the cover of the album “See the Light” by the British The group Hours, and in 2011 he came up with the cover for the Red Hot Chili Peppers record “I’m with You”. He has also collaborated with Levi's, ICA and Supreme and has designed covers for magazines including Pop, Tar and Garage. Hirst the collector owns a collection of paintings by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Tracey Emin. Tar Magazine cover, spring-summer 2009 (design by Damien Hirst, model Kate Moss 
Cover of Garage Magazine, autumn-winter 2011/2012 (photo by Hedi Slimane, design by Damien Hirst, model Lily Donaldson) Cover of Pop Magazine, autumn-winter 2009/2010 (photo by Jamie Morgan, design by Damien Hirst, model Tavi Gevinson) 
Red Hot Chili Peppers album cover “I’m with You” (2011) Clothing by Damien Damien Hirst X Supreme Skateboard Series, 2011 Works* In and Out of Love (1991), installation. * The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark in a tank with formaldehyde. This was one of the works nominated for the Turner Prize. * Pharmacy](1992), life-size reproduction of a pharmacy. * Away from the Flock (1994), dead sheep in formaldehyde. 
* Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything (1996) installation. 
* Mother and Child Divided * "For the Love of God", (2007) Records by D. Hirst * In 2007, the work "For the Love of God" (a platinum skull encrusted with diamonds) was sold through the White Cube gallery to a group of investors for a record amount for living artists of $100 million.
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.
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 art patron 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).
Hirst's first international recognition 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 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.
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 “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 this event. After this incident, representatives charitable foundation The artist was harshly criticized by the RSPCA animal rights group.
In September 2008, Hirst sold the complete collection of Beautiful Inside My Head Forever at Sotheby's for £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a single-artist auction.
The Sunday Times estimates that Hirst is the world's richest living artist, 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.
In 2011, Hirst designed the album cover for the musical Red groups Hot Chili Peppers "I'm with you".
In 2007, the work “For the Love of God” (a platinum skull encrusted with diamonds) was sold through the White Cube gallery to a group of investors for a record amount for living artists of $100 million. However, there is information that among the so-called “group investors" more than 70% of assets belong to Hearst himself and his companions. So this work was sold by no more than a third.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Tomkins K. “Biographies of Artists.” - M.: V-A-C press, 2013
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Damien Hirst(English: Damien Hirst, b. June 7, 1965) is a contemporary English artist. One of the most prominent representatives of the Young British Artists group. Winner of the Turner Prize 1995. Estimates for 2010: the richest artist in the world.
Biography and creativity
Damien Hirst born in 1965 in Bristol (England). Grew up in Leeds. His father left the family when Hearst was 12 years old, and his mother was unable to control her son. In his youth, he was arrested twice for shoplifting.
He studied at art school in Leeds and then (after a two-year pause) at Goldsmiths College (1986-1989), which at that time was considered innovative and offered an experimental training program, which attracted many talented students and teachers. At this time, he was very interested in the work of Francis Bacon, which was reflected in his future works. Even before completing his studies, in July 1988, he curated an exhibition "Freeze", which featured his own installations, among others. It should be noted that this exhibition itself was in many ways the project of the 23-year-old Hirst and marked the beginning of both his own career and the careers of a number of other artists, many of whom were also Goldsmiths graduates. Here Hirst was first noticed by millionaire and art collector Charles Saatchi, who was greatly impressed by the artist’s work. A year later, at Hirst’s second exhibition, he bought his work “A Thousand Years” and offered financial assistance in the creation of future works.
Installation "A thousand years" was a kind of system illustrating such global processes as life and death. The theme of death - Hirst's key theme - already occupies a dominant position in this work. The installation consisted of a container with fly eggs, a rotting cow's head and an electric fly swatter. Larvae hatched from the eggs, crawled towards the food (the cow's head), turned into flies and died when they came into contact with the fly swatter. Over time, the installation changed - the head became smaller and smaller, and there were more and more corpses of flies, and the viewer, coming to the exhibition again, saw the entire process described above in dynamics, observing not only life's path flies, but also the result of this process.
With Saatchi's money, Hirst created a work called “The physical impossibility of death in the consciousness of a living person”. This work was a dead four-meter shark in formaldehyde. It laid the foundation for a number of similar installations, one of which is "Mother and Child Separated"(literally from English) “Mother and child. Divided") – was presented at the Venice Biennale and brought Hirst international fame. Here the viewer sees creatures “frozen in death,” something frightening and repulsive, something that is no longer alive, but still retains its easily recognizable appearance. So, for example, in front of the conventional viewer of the installation “Physical Impossibility...” there is no shark, it has already died and only its shell remains. But the “dead” is perceived by the viewer only as “inanimate”. He sees the “formerly alive,” interpreting the new object through the prism of what it once was, rather than guided by what it is now.
The theme of death, which sometimes turns into the theme of the transience of life, runs like a red thread through all the work of Damien Hirst. In 2007 he created a work called "For the love of the Lord!", which is sometimes called "The Diamond Skull of Damien Hirst" and which became known as the most expensive work of art living author. This piece itself is a copy of the skull of a 35-year-old European man, made of platinum and completely encrusted with diamonds. There is a pink diamond in the center of the skull's forehead. The creation of this work cost Hirst 14 million pounds sterling.
Despite the conceptual foundations of Hirst's works, it is difficult to deny the deliberately scandalous nature of many of his works of this artist. Following dead animals in formaldehyde and the most expensive work art in the world installation should be mentioned "In and Out of Love" or in in this case "Inside and Out of Love"). There were chrysalises attached to the canvases on the walls, from which butterflies emerged. Entering the room, the spectators found themselves among these insects, which flew around them, landing both on the spectators themselves and on containers with fruit placed in the same room. The exhibition took place at the Tate Modern gallery and lasted 5 months. During this time, it attracted more than 460,000 visitors and became the most visited solo exhibition in the gallery's history. Later information appeared that 9,000 butterflies died during the exhibition and this caused protests from a number of environmental organizations.
Damien Hirst's paintings can be classified as geometric abstractionism (example: series “Spot paintings”) and (example: series “Spin paintings”)). The “Spots” series consists of paintings that depict circles of the same size, but different in color (the color is never the same), arranged in a lattice shape. The Rotations series consists of paintings that were created by pouring paint onto a rotating canvas. Hirst is also the author of a number of paintings that return us to the theme of butterflies: the Butterfly Color Paintings series consists of works where dead butterflies are attached to still-dry paint, which become the basis of the composition.