By Sakhshi Mahajan
During my days at the University of Chicago, I had the chance to take a class with David Galenson, an Economics professor who conducted research on the creative life cycles of artists from different fields. His study was to understand creativity and he categorized “artistic innovators” as conceptual and experimental. Conceptual being “young geniuses” and experimental being “old masters”. He carried out this study of painters using social scientific methods along with qualitative analysis {studying auction records} to see when artists “peaked” in their career. His argument was that conceptual innovators peak early in their career whereas experimental innovators peak later. His book Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art shows how the art of the twentieth century broke early artistic traditions: there was a demand for innovation which led a development of different art forms hence resulting in different conceptual artists including Picasso, Duchamp and Andy Warhol.
Conceptual art is a contemporary art form where the idea behind a work of art takes precedence over the medium used. Conceptual artists were often motivated to challenge conventional assumptions about art such as beauty, medium used and the traditional way and institutions of displaying art. They set out to execute their work only after their goals are stated and this exactness allows them to be satisfied once the works are completed.
This form was adopted by the Young British Artists, a generation of young visual artists headed by the famous Damien Hirst, a majority of which graduated from Goldsmiths college. The YBA revitalized the contemporary art scene in Britain in the late 1900’s. Hirst first came to public attention with the 1988 exhibition ‘Freeze’, which was showcased in an empty London Port Authority building in London’s Docklands and grabbed the attention of the famous art dealer and collector Charles Saatchi, who later became his biggest patron. His work has been an example of cutting edge contemporary art. Damien’s retrospective at the Tate Modern Museum in London is the first major survey of his work. The exhibition is running till the 9th of September 2012 and it provides an opportunity to trace the development of the artist’s career by experiencing his most iconic works.
‘Teenage’ Hirst
Damien Hirst
“There are four important things in life: religion, love, art and science.”- Damien Hirst.
All these four have been recurring themes in his artworks and his concepts and motifs are inspired from them.
SPOT PAINTINGS AND SPIN PAINTINGS
Spot paintings were one of Hirst’s early works and initial forms which emerged from his efforts to find a “scientific method” to “be in control of it {color} rather than it {color} controlling me”. His spot paintings are done very technically; each spot on the same canvas is of a different color, of the same size and are placed equidistant from each other creating a grid like structure with these smaller motifs. His paintings are two, three, four and five-inch circles, with some as big as 40 inches across, and others just a couple of millimeters flatly painted with household gloss on white or off-white backgrounds {also on walls}. The clarity, precision and quality of the painting are excellent. Damien has created close to 1500 of these works with the help of his assistants. These works look like they were generated from a machine and have a random repetition, but they aren’t. Hirst took over the world with his spot paintings because he ran a mundane idea in an original way.
Spot Paintings on square canvases
One of the most exciting rooms at the exhibition was the one with the Spin Paintings {below}; I smiled when I walked in to see the pure joy of color.
Spin Painting
Spin paintings, like Spot Paintings, are also made with household gloss paint. These canvases have been created on a spinning circular surface with different colored paints poured onto the rotating canvas from above. He describes these works as “childish … in the positive sense of the word”. They are spontaneous, playful, chaotic and beautiful, I felt like I was in Candy Land. The artist’s color choices and the motion of the machine, control the results of these paintings. Both the spin and spot paintings explore the idea of an imaginary mechanical painter.
BIRTH, DEATH & DECAY
Hirst has been inspired by the themes of birth, death and decay since the start. The way he brings out this concept is brutal, realistic and dreadfully daring. His Natural History series of animals preserved in tanks filled with formaldehyde was influenced by specimens he would see at the Natural History museum in Leeds while growing up. Besides fish specimens he also created ‘Away from the Flock’, preserving a dead lamb in formaldehyde solution within a tank {below}. The title is associated with Christianity and “to leave the flock,” means leaving behind the protection of the church. This work is a clear reference to religious decay; even though the sheep is dead it looks oblivious to its fate and seems to be prancing with life.
“Away from the Flock”
Glass, painted steel, silicone, acrylic, plastic, lamb and formaldehyde solution
Damien often uses the fourth dimension in his work, the fourth dimension being time that he depicts through the notion of death. His work ‘The Physical impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ {below} was to provoke in the viewer the fear of death: “ I thought, well, if I can get one in a big space, actually in liquid, big enough to frighten you, that you feel you’re in there with it, feel that it could eat you, it would work.” Charles Saatchi commissioned this work and it costed £50,000. It is meant to shock it’s viewers, but it was actually less distressing than the bisected cow and calf that revealed the flesh, organs and skeletal structure of these animals, not displaying these animals as living things anymore {further below}.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991
Mother and Child Divided 1993
Venice Biennale
Steel, GRP composites, glass, silicone sealants, cow, calf, formaldehyde solution
The most ghastly work at the show, ‘A Thousand Years’ was a literal enactment of birth, death and decay. It was a vitrine that had maggots hatch into flies, feed on a dead cow’s head and then die on an insect-o-cutor, a whole life cycle was going on in this glass box. This work had a life of it’s own and reminded people of the importance of “life” and the complexity of “death”. Prior to this he had never even considered the implications of killing living animals for art. Hirst had to escape the vitrine before the flies followed him. “It was the first time I’d ever made anything that had a life of its own, or had an uncontrollable life, or something that I had no control over. I had a sort of Frankenstein moment of “What the fuck have I done?” And the first fly got killed, and I was just like, “Oh, fuck.””
A Thousand Years
In my opinion this work was sadistic and I did clutch my stomach while viewing it. Was there a more impactful way to showcase such a banal phenomena? I will never forget seeing it, so probably not.
Additionally Hirst’s retrospective also had a two-room installation entitled ‘In and Out of Love’. In the first room he hung a group of big canvases embedded with pupae and butterflies hatched from the paintings. They flew around the room and fed on flowers and mated. On a central table, he supplied the butterflies with bowls of orange and pineapple chunks.
In and Out of Love
The experience was beautiful as these specimens were all over; some settled on the floor and walls and others on your clothes and hair. In the second room he showed eight monochrome canvases with dead butterflies stuck on to them and there were ashtrays with cigarette butts all over. The second room is easily forgotten, but the first one left me in a daze. The interesting part is that the butterflies were following the natural process of growing, reproducing, and dying as all living beings do. “Life” was beautiful.
MEDICINE CABINETS
Hirst first began working on the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ in his second year at Goldsmiths with Sinner {1988}; he filled it with the empty packages of his grandmother’s medication, which she had left him on her death. After that he created 12 medicine cabinets he titled after the twelve tracks on the Sex Pistol’s album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ and with two named after ‘God Save the Queen’. These cabinets were arranged as if they were a body, with each item positioned according to the organs it medically related to but eventually the minimalist colors and designs of the medicines determined the arrangement within the cabinet. In addition to the medicine cabinets, he also created cabinets and displayed objects like museological specimens including surgical instruments, cigarettes, shells and glasses. These cabinets represented the passing of time and the transient nature of life: “ You can only cure people for so long and then they’re going to die anyway”. He believes that science helps people find light in the darkness and he compares it to religion “ Like religion it provides the glimmer of hope that maybe it will be all right in the end”.
Pharmacy, 1992
Glass, faced particleboard, painted MDF, beech, ramin, wooden dowels, aluminum, pharmaceutical packaging, desks, office
Sex Pistols
Damien Hirst is the richest living artist today and the absolute embodiment of a capitalist artist. ‘Beautiful Inside my head forever’, the two-day auction at Sotheby’s where the artist engaged directly with the art market through an auction house and not a gallery/dealer made him a brand in the market. This exhibit was gawdy in a sense and it showcased how much money he has. His gold cabinets with 30,000 diamonds and his renowned diamond studded skull ‘For the Love of God’ {below} were extremely costly to produce.
For the Love of God
Costed £14 million to produce
Judgement Day
Gold cabinet with crystals
Damien is historically significant because he has provided the art world with some of the most memorable and iconic images. These images are like Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s soup cans’ and creating such strong imagery titled him as a creative genius. As Galenson said, “Young conceptual innovators created dozens of new forms of art and also behaved in ways that would have been incomprehensible to their predecessors.” Moreover, he believed that {Experimental} Artists who are concerned with the aesthetic qualities of their artworks rely on trial and error to improve their work and hence they only peak at a later age, whereas conceptual artists peak early in their career. Damien is a living example of this phenomenon. He peaked a long time ago, as his ideas were innovative. The truth is he has not created anything significant in a long time and is riding off his past accolades, maybe that is the reason why he has a retrospective at the age of 47. However, important artists are innovators whose work changes the practices of their successors.
Damien’s work has been cutting edge and the truth is that he has influenced his peers and successors, primarily conceptual artists, all over the world. He may have already peaked, but that doesn’t give critics the right to dismiss his brilliance because his impact has resonated all over the world. Galenson’s research and methods may be too radical and statistical for art historians, but they helped me appreciate an “innovators” career. There is a reason why Hirst is known as an entrepreneur before he is known as an artist; his work can be repulsive, overtly daring and it is pitted against our value system. “It’s such a crass idea – you’re either in love or out of love.”
