Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst[1] (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and the most prominent[2] member of the group known as "Young British Artists" (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s.[3] He is internationally renowned,[4] and is reputed to be the richest living artist to date.[5] During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,[6] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.[7] He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly-colored circles.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist[8] by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.[9] The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction[10] as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.[9]





Breakthrough

In July 1988 in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and (Sir) Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of his Goldsmiths' lecturer Michael Craig-Martin. Hirst's own contribution to the show consisted of a cluster of cardboard boxes painted with household paint.[16] After graduating, Hirst was included in New Contemporaries show and in a group show at Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.

In 1990 Hirst, along with his friend Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman, curated two enterprising "warehouse" shows, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former Peek Freans biscuit factory they designated "Building One".[17][18] Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Hundred Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head.[19] They also staged Michael Landy's Market.[18] At this time, Hirst said, "I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."[14]

In 1991 his first solo exhibition, organised by Tamara Chodzko - Dial, In and Out of Love, was held in an unused shop on Woodstock Street in central London; he also had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition Broken English, in part curated by Hirst. At this time Hirst met the up-and-coming art dealer, Jay Jopling, who then represented him.