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 lettering, Jake and Dinos Chapman with a love for small figures, and a dozen other artists.

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

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

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

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

In 1991, Charles Saatchi bought an Australian shark for Hirst for six thousand pounds. Today the shark symbolizes the soap bubble of modern art. For newspaper people, it has become a common staple (for example, the Sun article 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, Sovriska's largest museum along with New York's MoMA and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Attention to the installation was attracted not only by the list of key names for contemporary art, but also by the time of its 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 by Hirst (and also expensive in every sense) is 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 displayed at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum 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 development is an example of an ideal scenario for any modern 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.

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 disagreements 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, 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 severe criticism.

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.

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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3 April 2012, 17:53

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. A member of the Young British Artists group, he 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 dollars. "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 band The Hours, and in 2011 he came up with 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.

How to sell a dead shark for 12 million dollars?

The bloody reputation of sharks has ensured their popularity not only among residents of seaside towns, but also among business tycoons who successfully envelop these formidable fish.

Selling a dead fish for $12 million is a deal the luckiest businessmen probably wouldn’t even dream of.

However, this turned out to be quite possible for the New York advertising business tycoon, the famous art collector Charles Saatchi.

The origins of the story about the dead lie back in 1991, when the fashionable British artist Damien Hirst himself, as he admitted, posted advertisements for the purchase of the carcass of a freshly caught shark on the coast of the Australian town of Ipswich.

Not much was promised - only 4 thousand dollars for the capture of the predator, and another 2 thousand for the fact that the carcass would be covered with ice and sent by plane to England.

None of the fishermen could have imagined that they would later be able to make a fortune from this corpse!

Hirst needed the dead shark to create a work of art with the complex title “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” - and Saatchi also commissioned it.

For the creation of the exhibition, the tycoon paid the artist 50 thousand pounds sterling (about 100 thousand dollars at that time).

In fact, the masterpiece was a 5-meter shark embalmed in formaldehyde.

Even at that time, the sum seemed so ridiculous that the famous weekly Sun newspaper greeted the deal with the headline “50 thousand for fish without chips!”

Only a year passed - and the dead carcass began to decompose due to unsuccessful processing of the tissues - the dorsal fin fell off, the skin became wrinkled and acquired a green tint, and the formaldehyde in the aquarium became cloudy.

The curators of the Saatchi Gallery, trying to somehow save the exhibit, added a little bleach to the tank, but this only accelerated the decomposition.

Finally, in 1993, they gave up, skinned the corpse and stretched it onto a strong plastic frame. The dead shark was still green.

Shark in formaldehyde - art without borders

Around the same time, animal rights activists, with the help of the media, started a riot on the pages of newspapers, declaring that this was not art, but an ordinary mockery of a corpse.

What prevented Saatchi from simply throwing away the rotten fish and replacing it with exactly the same, but fresh? Art critics answer this question categorically - if the shark is somehow updated or changed, it will no longer be the same work. Just like if you repaint a Rembrandt, it won’t be Rembrandt anymore.

Finally, Saatchi decided to sell the exhibit. The mediator was the famous New York art dealer Larry Gagosian.

A few London collectors and museums were known to have shown mild interest, but none expressed any definite desire to buy the long-spoiled dead fish.

$12 million for a dead fish

The most promising of all the buyers turned out to be billionaire from Connecticut, collector Steve Cohen. He purchased the exhibit.

12 million dollars - the price of a rotten, half-collapsed, discolored fish shocked the world contemporary art market.

And the point is not even that this amount turned out to be the largest in the world ever paid for a work by the artist during his lifetime.

Steve Cohen, who earns more than half a billion dollars a year, can easily afford such a whim - simple calculations show that the purchase cost him only five days' income.

But is such an acquisition a work of art? The opinions of experts, and even ordinary people, differ.

And while people argue, the tank containing the world's most famous dead shark is gathering dust in the vaults of Steve Cohen's gallery.

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 raised 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, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of a Living Person” was created in 1991, 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 - until today) - 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 of the animal welfare charity RSPCA harshly criticized the artist.

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.

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 disagreements led to a break in 2003.

In 2011, Hirst designed the cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers album “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

When writing this article, materials from the following sites were used:en.wikipedia.org ,

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