Welcome to "...Is that Art? Friday" week 3!
Have you ever wondered why so many of the controversial artworks are sculptures? I do. And it might be an exciting conversation for a future article. But for this week's art forum, I decided to write about Damien Hirst. Surprise, Surprise? The British artist is mostly known for his 3-dimensional works: installations, live installations, sculptures and ready-mades. If you haven't heard about Damien Hirst (which I doubt), he is a British artist that won the Turner Prize in 1995. Hirst defines his practice as an exploration of life and death and, more recently started to struggle to sell art because people are questioning his ethics towards animal rights.
Damien Hirst is known for his encapsulated animals as "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (1991) or "The Golden Calf" (2008). Hirst has been facing a lot of critiques over the years around the way he is treating animals to make his art. In 2017, a study was conducted around the subject by ArtNet News, and it's estimated that nearly one million animals have died. The concept behind the works was basically to expose what death looks like and how we all look the same if we are cut in half. But couldn't the artist have done this differently?
To make this works even more controversial, his famous shark ("The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (1991)), had to be replaced as it began to deteriorate. Which means that another shark had to be killed solely for the purpose of making art. Hirst is controversial mostly for this: he decides how he wants the animal to be killed, and if it doesn't work as he desires, he just gets another fresh animal to be sacrificed.
The statement about the artist concerning his works is evident in the sense that death is just death. Death will always be the same, it doesn't matter if it is x, y or z animal. We are all the same in that sense. But the way he is taking the lead of these animals lifes is just not right. And it makes the viewer feel that he would do the same with a human body if he could. If we are the same, as Hirst is trying to say, why don't we have the same right to live? I believe this is crossing a line where this is no longer art. Some may say that the artist, especially in "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (1991), is trying to bring a different perspective of the moving animal to a still object. But art shouldn't ever have to be this unethical to achieve any kind of artistic quality.
No wonder he is struggling to make money out of his works. When you have this reputation in such a conscious moment around animals and the environment, this is obviously no longer accepted as high art. Although all this, Damien Hirst will forever have his place in the history of art because he still made work relevant to open up a conversation. Even if it serves to change the laws in the future, it served the purpose for something.
How do you feel about Damien Hirst practice? Do you agree with my opinion? Do you think that the sculpture could have worked with reproductions of the animals instead of the actual animals?
Do you believe that this is art at all?
Let me know what you think 🤔
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Footnotes
This may be interesting to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xATkpiwa5n4
More info:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-whats-your-beef-916097
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/story-damien-hirst-shark/
Images:
"Hirst" by JoetheLion is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
"P1010610" by momardi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"20071111 london 010" by pavel1998 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0