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Damien HirstDamien Hirst - Abacus, hirst, skull, silver, sculpture, contemporary art2007
2007
About the Item
Damien Hirst (b.1965)
Abacus - The Dream is Dead
2007
silver
14.5 x 14 x 21 cm
incised, titled and numbered ‘Abacus Damien Hirst The Dream is dead 2/12’ (on the verso)
edition 2/12
Price:
$85,000 USD
Provenance:
White Cube, London
Private collection, New York
Sale: Christie’s London, 29 June 2011, lot 114
Private collection, London (acquired at the above sale)
Notes:
‘I remember I was thinking that there were four important things in life: religion, love, art and science. At their best, they’re all just tools to help you find a path through the darkness. None of them really work that well, but they help. Of them all, science seems to be the one right now. Like religion, it provides the glimmer of hope that maybe it will be all right in the end.’ (D. Hirst, quoted in conversation with S. O’Hagan in New Religion Damien Hirst, exh. cat., British
Council, London, 2006, p. 5)
Born in 1965 in Bristol, Hirst grew up in Leeds and subsequently went to Goldsmith's College in London. Between 1988 and 1990 he curated a series of exhibitions of work by his contemporaries including the highly acclaimed group shows Freeze, Modern Medicine and Gambler.
In his own work Hirst has continually challenged the boundaries between art, science, the media and popular culture. A 12-foot tiger shark, a cow and her calf sawn in two, pharmaceutical bottles, house paint flung onto spinning canvases, spot paintings, cigarette butts, medicine cabinets, office furniture, medical instruments, butterflies and tropical fish are just some of the means Hirst employs to communicate his unflinching view of the ambiguity at the heart of human experience. Hirst has said 'I am going to die and I want to live forever. I can't escape the fact, and I can't let go of the desire.'
Whilst best known for the 'Natural History' works that present animals suspended in formaldehyde, Hirst has also presented works that attest to the transience of biological existence. An early work 'In and Out of Love' (1991) focuses on a butterfly's brief life-span from hatching to decay, whilst 'A Thousand Years' (1990) consists of a rotting cow's head, sugar solution, fly eggs and a fly zapper - a veritable memento mori in the 'Vanitas' tradition. In many of Hirst's works the glass vitrine functions as both window and barrier, seducing the viewer into the work visually whilst providing a minimalist geometry to rigorously frame, contain and objectify the subject, thus avoiding sentimental expressionism. It is a way of getting the viewer to think about things they may not wish to think about. Hirst makes iconoclastic works recasting the fundamental questions concerning the meaning of life, the existence of god and death as the final limit, in paradoxically the most factual and unorthodox way.
In many of the sculptures of the 1990s such as 'The Acquired Inability to Escape' (1991) and 'The Asthmatic Escaped' (1992) a human presence was implied through the inclusion of 'relic' like objects in the works; clothes, cigarettes, ashtrays, tables, chairs, a Ventolin inhaler. That implied presence has become explicit in works such as 'Ways of Seeing' (2000), a vitrine sculpture that presents the figure of a laboratory technician seated at a desk heightening the sense of being trapped and of being reduced to a single function: an eye looking through a microscope. The more celebratory work 'Hymn' (2000), a polychrome bronze sculpture, reveals the anatomical musculature and internal organs of the human body on a monumental scale.
Hirst has had exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. He received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin in 1994 and the Turner Prize in 1995.
Categories:
Damien Hirst - Abacus, hirst, skull, silver, sculpture, contemporary art, death, memento mori, authentic, original, decorative, design, art,
- Creator:Damien Hirst (1965, British)
- Creation Year:2007
- Dimensions:Height: 5.71 in (14.5 cm)Width: 5.52 in (14 cm)Depth: 8.27 in (21 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU141427264132
Damien Hirst
British artist Damien Hirst is widely considered the enfant terrible of contemporary art. He is the most prominent of the so-called Young British Artists, or YBAs, a group, largely composed of Hirst’s classmates at Goldsmiths, in London, that began exhibiting together in warehouses and factories after 1988 and is known for the use of unconventional materials and “shock tactics” in his paintings, prints, sculptures and other works.
In the 1990s, Hirst said, “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.” And indeed, he is notorious for piquing critics and baffling the public with such pieces as his signature glass vitrines containing dead sheep or sharks in formaldehyde, and his diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God.
Working primarily in sculpture, Hirst takes after French modernist master Marcel Duchamp in his use of ready-made objects and materials, which he combines to ironic effect. He often creates in series, as with "The Cure (Violet)" and "The Cure (Turquoise)," both from 2014, which are among several pill paintings referencing Andy Warhol’s embrace of mass production.
Belonging to Hirst's ongoing series of “spot” paintings, begun in the 1980s, the 2005 piece Xylene Cyanol Dye Solution is striking for its machinelike, industrial uniformity and almost childlike simplicity, a seeming rebuke to the idea of the artist-as-genius.
In addition to making art, Hirst has launched stores that sell editioned works (Other Criteria), a restaurant (Pharmacy2) and even his own London museum (Newport Street Gallery).
Find original Damien Hirst paintings, prints and other works on 1stDibs.
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