Damien Hirst: The First Look

I watched two documentary’s about Damien Hirst; the first was about called 'Thoughts, Work and Life' and the second was called 'The First Look' which was a guided tour around the exhibition at Tate Modern.

Throughout the programme I was thinking about the question 'Is any of this Art?' I'm yet to come to a conclusion. However, I kept thinking that some of his pieces of work are beautiful.

 This was the piece of work which I especially liked. It is called 'Mother and Child Divided' 1997. I felt like it was a beautiful piece of work regardless if I felt that it was art or not. I like the way the cow and calf were accurately cut down the middle and the insides remained intact. When looking at the inside of the cows closely it is as though you are looking at a map. On one of the documentaries Damien Hirst said "the symmetry of it is weird; it is so violent, but then it is like calm violence." It was interesting when he said that "you have to confront things you can't avoid" with regards to dead because like this piece of his work and nearly all of the others the idea of death, minimalism and the creating of endless variations of one thing. 

Another piece of work which shows immortality is the platinum cast of a skull from an actual person that lived between 1720 and 1810. He was a 35 year old man from Europe. His teeth are still showing, but the rest of him is covered with 8,601 diamonds made in 2007.

He always felt that he was creating work to do with life but to the audience it looks as though it is to do with death and that he is a morbid individual. The idea for the diamond skull came about when he was in Mexico. He was able to see a clear difference between how countries and cultures view death. In Mexico "they walk hand in hand with death and they celebrate it. They have picnics in the grave yard whereas in England it's difficult to deal with and people don't like to talk about it." Through out the documentries it was interesting to hear the reasons why he produced a piece of work and that he didnt plan the next one, With regards to the diamond skull he said that he had been "inspired by the tourqoise decorated skull from the British Museum. Decoration is not seen as a very good thing so then to have death as something very powerful and to decorate it with diamonds seems like it becomes a very powerful thing."

Bibliography:

http://www.damienhirst.com/

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/damien-hirst

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/damienhirst

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/damien-hirst/4od#3310481

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/damien-hirst/4od#3312345