Contemporary art hurst. Anatomical sculptures by Damien Hirst. The last "loud" work

The Gary Tatintsian Gallery has opened an exhibition of Damien Hirst, one of the most expensive and famous contemporary artists. This is not the first time Hirst has been brought to Russia: before that there was a retrospective at the Russian Museum, a small exhibition at the Triumph Gallery, as well as a collection of the artist himself at MAMM. This time, visitors will be presented with the most significant works of 2008, sold by the artist himself at Sotheby's personal auction in the same year. Buro 24/7 tells why butterflies, multi-colored circles and tablets are so important for understanding Hirst's work.

How Hirst became an artist

Damien Hirst can be fully considered the personification of Young British Artists - a generation of no longer young, but very successful artists, whose peak of prosperity was in the 90s. Among them are Tracey Emin with neon lettering, Jake and Dinos Chapman with a love for small figures, and a dozen other artists.

The YBA are united not only by their studies at the prestigious Goldsmiths College, but also by their first joint exhibition, Freeze, which was held in 1988 in an empty administration building in London's docklands. Hirst himself acted as the curator - he selected the works, ordered the catalog and planned the opening of the exhibition. Freeze attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul, collector and future patron of Young British Artists. Two years later, Saatchi acquired Hirst's first installation in his collection, A Thousand Years, and also offered him sponsorship for his future creations.

Damien Hirst, 1996. Photo: Catherine McGann/Getty Images

The theme of death, which later became central to Hirst’s work, already appears in A Thousand Years. The essence of the installation was a constant cycle: flies emerged from the eggs of larvae, crawled to the rotting cow's head and died on the wires of an electronic fly swatter. A year later, Saatchi lent Hirst money to create another work about the circle of life - the famous stuffed shark placed in formaldehyde.

“The physical impossibility of death in the consciousness of a living person”

In 1991, Charles Saatchi bought an Australian shark for Hirst for six thousand pounds. Today the shark symbolizes the soap bubble of modern art. For newspaper people, it has become a common staple (for example, the Sun article entitled “£50,000 for fish and chips”), and also became one of the main topics of the book by economist Don Thompson “How to sell a stuffed shark for 12 million: the scandalous truth about modern art and auction houses."

Despite the noise, hedge fund head Steve Cohen bought the work in 2006 for eight million dollars. Among the interested buyers was Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Modern gallery, Sovriska's largest museum along with New York's MoMA and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Attention to the installation was attracted not only by the list of key names for contemporary art, but also by the duration of its existence - 15 years. Over the years, the shark's body had become rotten, and Hirst had to replace it and stretch it onto a plastic frame. “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living” was the first work in the “Natural History” series - subsequently Hirst also placed sheep and dismembered cow carcasses in formaldehyde.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991

Black Sheep, 2007

Love's Paradox (Surrender or Autonomy, Separateness as a Precondition for Connection.), 2007

The Tranquility of Solitude (for George Dyer), 2006

Rotations and kaleidoscopes

Hirst's works can be divided into several genres. In addition to the aforementioned aquariums with formaldehyde, there are “rotations” and “spots” - the latter are performed by the artist’s assistants in his studio. Butterflies continue the theme of life and death. There is a kaleidoscope like a stained glass window in a Gothic cathedral, and a grandiose installation “Falling in or Falling Out of Love” - rooms completely filled with these insects. To create the latter, Hirst sacrificed about nine thousand butterflies: 400 new insects were brought daily to the Tate Gallery, where the retrospective was held, to replace the dead.

The retrospective became the most visited in the history of the museum: in five months it was seen by almost half a million spectators. Next to the theme of life and death, there is also a logical “pharmacy” - when looking at the artist’s dot paintings, associations arise specifically with medicines. In 1997, Damien Hirst opened the Pharmacy restaurant. It closed in 2003, and the sale of decorative and interior items at auction brought in an astounding $11.1 million. Hirst also developed the theme of medical drugs in a more visual way - a separate series by the artist is dedicated to cabinets with hand-laid out pills. The most financially successful work was “Spring Lullaby” - a rack of pills brought the artist $19 million.

Damien Hirst, Untitled, 1992; In Search of Nirvana, 2007 (installation fragment)

"For the Love of God"

Another famous work by Hirst (and also expensive in every sense) is a skull studded with more than eight thousand diamonds. The work received its name from the First Epistle of John - “For this is the love of God.” This again refers us to the theme of the frailty of life, the inevitability of death and discussions about the essence of existence. In the forehead of the skull is a diamond worth four million pounds. The production itself cost Hirst 12 million, and the price for the work ultimately amounted to about 50 million pounds (about 100 million dollars). The skull was displayed at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and then sold to a group of investors through the White Cube gallery of Jay Jopling, another major dealer who collaborated with Hirst.

Damien Hirst, "For this is the love of God", 2007

Records, fakes and the phenomenon of fame

Although Hirst does not set absolute records, he is considered one of the most expensive among living artists. The rise in prices for his works reached a peak in the late 2000s, with the sale of a shark, a skull and other works. A separate episode can be called the Sotheby's auction at the height of economic crisis 2008: it brought him 111 million pounds, which is 10 times more than the previous record - a similar Picasso auction in 1993. The most expensive lot was the Golden Calf, a formaldehyde carcass of a bull, sold for £10.3 million.

The story of Hirst’s development is an example of an ideal scenario for any modern artist, in which competent marketing played almost a key role. Even ridiculous stories like the gallery cleaner Eyestorm, who put the artist’s installation in a trash bag, or the Florida pastor, convicted of trying to sell Hirst fakes in 2014, look incomprehensible against the backdrop of the loud antics of the artist himself. The decline in interest in Hirst has become most obvious in the last five years after the next exhibition at White Cube- the pressure of critics became more noticeable, Hirst’s ingenuity no longer amazed the jaded public, and auction records passed to other players - Richter, Koons and Kapoor. One way or another, Hirst’s halo of fame continues to spread to his old works, which today can be viewed in the Tatintsyan Gallery. Hirst also has new projects ahead - on the eve of the Venice Biennale, the artist opens a large exhibition at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. According to the press release, they are "the fruit of a decade of work" - it is likely that everyone will be talking about Damien Hirst again.

Damien Hirst or Damien Hirst(English) Damien Hirst, 7 June, Bristol, UK) is one of the most valuable living artists and the most prominent figure in the Young British Artists group. Young British Artists). He has dominated the British art scene since the 1990s.

Death is a central theme in his works. The artist's most famous series is Natural History: dead animals (such as shark, sheep or cow) in formaldehyde. Significant work - “The physical impossibility of death in the mind of a living person” (eng. ): tiger shark in an aquarium with formaldehyde. The sale of this work in 2004 made him the second most expensive living artist (after Jasper Johns). In March 2007, Damien Hirst's exhibition entitled Superstition, was sold for over 25 million.

Throughout the 1990s, his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but growing differences led to a split in 2003.

Biography

Career

Damien Hirst became famous in 1988 as the young impresario of an exhibition called “Freeze” (at that moment the fashion for one-word titles was briefly established). The scene was an empty building in the London port area, next to the Thames. Hirst, together with fellow students from Goldsmith College, an educational institution with an innovative orientation, announced a new vector for the development of Western European art, which ended the “revival of painting of the 80s” and revived interest in everyday banalities, sexual innuendo, and the harsh realities of life and death. Another feature, a solid dose of irony and street humor, aroused increased interest among art dealers and the art community in the generation of Richard Peterson, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Ian Davenport and Hirst himself.

In 1991, Hirst's first solo exhibition, In and Out of Love, took place at Woodstock Street Gallery in London; he also had a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and at the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. At the same time, Hirst met art dealer Jay Jopling Jay Jopling, who represents his interests to this day.

In 1992, the first Young British Artists exhibition took place at the Saatchi Gallery in north London. Hirst's work was called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and was a shark swimming in formaldehyde in an aquarium. The work cost Saatchi £50,000. The shark was caught by a fisherman in Australia and had a price tag of £6,000. As a result, Hirst was nominated for the Turner Prize, which was awarded to Grenville Davey. In 1993, Hirst's first notable appearance was at the Venice Biennale with Mother and Child Divided. Mother and Child Divided.

Hirst curated the show in 1994 Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he presented Away from the Flock(sheep in an aquarium). In 1995, Hirst received the Turner Prize.

Hirst's autobiographical book was published in 1998. I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now. In 1999 he declined an invitation to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale.

In September 2000, in New York, a Hirst exhibition was held Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. 100,000 people visited the exhibition in twelve weeks and all the works were sold.

In December 2004 The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen for $12 million. The piece was donated by a collector to MoMA in New York. In 2007, Damien Hirst set another price record by creating one of the most expensive modern sculptures - a skull studded with diamonds (the total number of which is 8,601). The price of the masterpiece made of platinum, diamonds and human teeth, called “For the Love of God”, is about $100 million.

Works

• In and Out of Love(1991), installation.
• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living(1991), tiger shark in a formaldehyde aquarium. It was one of the works nominated for the Turner Prize.
• Pharmacy](1992), life-size reproduction of a pharmacy.
• A Thousand Years(1991), installation.
• Amonium Biborate (1993)
• Away from the Flock(1994), dead sheep in formaldehyde.
• Arachidic Acid(1994) painting.
• Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything(1996) installation.
• Hymn (1996)
• Two Fucking and Two Watching
• The Stations of the Cross (2004)
• The Wrath of God (2005)
• "The Inescapable Truth", (2005)
• "The Sacred Heart of Jesus", (2005).
• "Faithless", (2005)
• "The Hat Makes de Man", (2005)
• "The Death of God", (2006)
• "For the Love of God", (2007)

Damien Hirst is one of the most influential artists of his time. And besides, he is undoubtedly the richest living artist in the world. modern world. The combination of these two factors is enough for the Tate Modern gallery in London to create a retrospective exhibition of his works.

1. British artist Damien Hirst poses next to his most famous work, a tiger shark in an aquarium with formaldehyde. The installation, which has become widely known throughout the world, is called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

2. British artist Damien Hirst poses in front of his painting “I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds” at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

3. British artist Damien Hirst poses in front of his triptych “Doorways to the Kingdom of Heaven” at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

4. British artist Damien Hirst poses in front of his triptych “Doorways to the Kingdom of Heaven”.

5. A woman walks past the sculpture “Hymn” by outrageous British artist Damien Hirst. The sculpture is exhibited outside the Tate Modern gallery in London.

6. The sculpture “Hymn” by British artist Damien Hirst, which is exhibited near the Tate Modern gallery in London.

7. A visitor views one of the works from the "Spin Painting" series by British artist Damien Hirst at an exhibition of the artist's work at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

8. A visitor views one of the works from the “Spot Painting” series by British artist Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

9. Work from the “Spot Painting” series by British artist Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

10. Visitors to an exhibition of works by Damien Hirst view the work “Mother and Child Divided” by British artist Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

11. Visitors view the installation “Trinity – Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology” (“Trinity – Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology”) by British artist Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern gallery in London).

12. A visitor views the installation “A Thousand Years” by British artist Damien Hirst at an exhibition at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

13. Reflections of visitors in the installation “Lullaby, The Seasons” by British artist Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

14. Visitors to an art gallery in Mexico City view the work of British artist Damien Hirst.

15. An art student at the University of the Arts College examines the work of British artist Damien Hirst for an exhibition at an art gallery in Mexico City.

16. A visitor views an installation by British artist Damien Hirst at an exhibition in an art gallery in Mexico City.

17. Visitors view the work of British artist Damien Hirst at the Kunsthaus Bregenz exhibition center in Bregenz, Austria.

18. The installation “For the Love of God” by British artist Damien Hirst is a life-size replica of a human skull encrusted with diamonds.

19. An exhibition visitor walks past Damien Hirst's "Death Explained" at an exhibition at an art gallery in central London.

20. Works by Damien Hirst are presented at the prestigious Sotheby's auction.

21. A media representative examines Damien Hirst’s work “Mother and Child Divided” (1993) at an exhibition in Tokyo

22. British artist Damien Hirst and American artist Joo pose for a photo in front of their works of art at an art gallery in Berlin.

23. A woman looks at the works of British artist Damien Hirst and American artist Joo in an art gallery in Berlin.

24. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire view the sculpture "Legend" by Damien Hirst in the garden at their Chatsworth House estate.

25. A security guard stands near paintings by Damien Hirst at the Gagosian Gallery in London.

26. British artist Damien Hirst during one of his exhibitions in London.

27. A visitor views Damien Hirst's work entitled "The Golden Calf" before the Sotheby's auction, which will feature works by the outrageous artist.

28. Damien Hirst poses in front of one of his works during an exhibition in Kyiv, Ukraine.

29. British artist Damien Hirst poses in front of one of his works during his stay in Kyiv.

30. Ukrainian businessman Victor Pinchuk watches British artist Damien Hirst create one of his works during an exhibition at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv.

31. An unusual installation by Damien Hirst, consisting entirely of unfolded tablets, Museum Brandhorst, a contemporary art museum in Munich.

32. Auction employee in Seoul in front of Damien Hirst’s “Tranquility”, which is created from butterflies, Hong Kong.

33. People are reflected in installations by Damien Hirst at the Museum Brandhorst, a contemporary art museum in Munich.

34. Installation by Damien Hirst “Spot Mini”, a car decorated with multi-colored spots.

35. The installation “Togetherness” (“Together”) by Damien Hirst is presented at Sotheby’s auction in London.

36. The installation “The Sleep of Reason” by Damien Hirst is presented at Sotheby’s auction in London.

37. Damien Hirst at a press preview before an exhibition of his works in Hong Kong.

38. Damien Hirst poses for photographs in front of his installation entitled "The Incredible Journey" at a press preview before Sotheby's auction in London, where his work "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" will be exhibited.

It was he who came up with the idea of ​​encrusting human skulls with diamonds and making art objects from the corpses of cows. Damien Hirst(Damien Hirst) is a British artist and collector who first gained fame in the late 1980s. A member of the Young British Artists group, he is considered the most expensive artist in the world and the richest in the UK according to The Sunday Times (2010). His works are included in the collections of many museums and galleries: Tate, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, Ulrecht Central Museum, etc.
Damien Hirst was born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol, UK. Much of his childhood was spent in Leeds. After his parents' divorce, when Damien was 12 years old, he began to lead a more free lifestyle and was arrested twice for petty theft. However, Hirst was interested in drawing from childhood and graduated from Leeds Art College, and later continued his studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London (1986–1989). Some of his drawings were made in the morgue; the theme of death subsequently became the main one in the artist’s work. Damien Hirst is in a civil marriage with designer Maya Norman, the couple has three sons. Most Hirst spends time with his family at his home in Devon in northern England. Dream, 2008 Anthem, 2000 In 1988, Damien Hirst organized an exhibition of Goldsmith students (Richard and Simon Patterson, Sarah Lucas, Fiona Rae, Angus Fairhurst, etc., later they began to be called “Young British Artists”) Freeze, which attracted public attention. Here the artists, and above all Hirst, were noticed by the famous collector Charles Saatchi. Lost Love, 2000 In 1990, Damien Hirst took part in the Modern Medicine and Gambler exhibitions. He presented his work “A Thousand Years”: a glass container with the head of a cow, covered with corpse flies, this work was bought by Saatchi. From that time on, Damien and the collector began to work closely together until 2003. “I will die - and I want to live forever. I cannot escape death, and I cannot escape the desire to live. I want to see at least a glimpse of what it’s like to die.” In 1991, Hirst’s first solo exhibition in London, In and Out of Love, took place, and in 1992, the Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which featured Hirst’s work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living”: Tiger Shark in formaldehyde. This work simultaneously brought the artist fame even among those who are far from art, and a nomination for the Turner Prize. In 1993, Hirst took part in the Venice Biennale with the work “Mother and Child Separated”, and a year later he curated the exhibition Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, where he presented his composition “The Lost Sheep” (a dead sheep in formaldehyde), which was renamed "Black Sheep" when the artist poured ink into the aquarium. Damien Hirst received the Turner Prize in 1995. At the same time, the artist presented the installation Two Fucking and Two Watching, representing a decomposing cow and bull. In subsequent years, Hirst's exhibitions were held in London, Seoul, and Salzburg. In 1997, Hirst's autobiographical book "I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now" was published. In 2000, the work “Hymn”, shown at the Art Noise exhibition, was acquired by Saatchi; the sculpture was an anatomical model of the human body more than six meters high. In the same year, the exhibition “Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings” was held, which was visited by about 100 thousand people, all of Hirst’s sculptures were sold. Self-portrait: "Kill yourself, Damien" In 2004, one of the most famous works Hirst - "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living" - Saatchi sold to another collector, Steve Cohen. Its cost was $12 million. "It's very easy to say, 'Well, even I could do that.' The point is that I did “it” In 2007, Damien Hirst presented the work “For the love of God - a human skull, covered in platinum and studded with diamonds, only the teeth are natural. It was bought by a group of shareholders (including Hirst himself) for 50 million pounds (or $100 million), while the artist himself spent 14 million pounds on its creation. Thus, “For the Love of God” is the most expensive work of art by a living artist. “Investment banker in formaldehyde” Hirst is also a painter; some of his most famous works are the triptychs “Meaning Nothings”, made in the manner of Francis Bacon (some of them were sold before the opening of the exhibition in 2009), the Spots series (multi-colored dots on white backgrounds reminiscent of pop art), Spins (concentric circles), Butterflies (canvases using butterfly wings).
Damien Hirst also acts as a designer: in 2009 he used his painting “Beautiful, Father Time, Hypnotic, Exploding Vortex, The Hours Painting” to design the cover of the album “See the Light” by the British band The Hours, and in 2011 he came up with cover for the Red Hot Chili Peppers record “I’m with You”. He has also collaborated with Levi's, ICA and Supreme and has designed covers for magazines including Pop, Tar and Garage. Hirst the collector owns a collection of paintings by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Tracey Emin. Tar Magazine cover, spring-summer 2009 (design by Damien Hirst, model Kate Moss Cover of Garage Magazine, autumn-winter 2011/2012 (photo by Hedi Slimane, design by Damien Hirst, model Lily Donaldson) Cover of Pop Magazine, autumn-winter 2009/2010 (photo by Jamie Morgan, design by Damien Hirst, model Tavi Gevinson) Red Hot Chili Peppers album cover “I’m with You” (2011) Clothing by Damien Damien Hirst X Supreme Skateboard Series, 2011 Works* In and Out of Love (1991), installation. * The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark in a tank with formaldehyde. This was one of the works nominated for the Turner Prize. * Pharmacy](1992), life-size reproduction of a pharmacy. * Away from the Flock (1994), dead sheep in formaldehyde. * Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything (1996) installation.
* Mother and Child Divided * "For the Love of God", (2007) Records by D. Hirst * In 2007, the work "For the Love of God" (a platinum skull encrusted with diamonds) was sold through the White Cube gallery to a group of investors for a record amount for living artists of $100 million.

Text: Ksyusha Petrova

Today in the Moscow Gallery of Gary Tatintsyan opens the first exhibition since 2006 of Damien Hirst, a British artist who is not in vain called “the great and terrible,” comparing him either to the geniuses of the Renaissance or to the sharks from Wall Street. Hirst is considered the richest living author, which only fuels the controversy surrounding his work. Since Charles Saatchi literally stared with his mouth open at the installation “A Thousand Years” - a spectacular and gloomy illustration of everything life path from birth to death - the noise around the creative methods and aesthetic value of Hirst's works does not subside, which the artist himself, of course, is only happy about. We tell you why Hirst’s works are really worthy of the enormous attention they receive, and we try to understand the artist’s inner world - much more ambiguous and subtle than it might seem from the outside.

"Away from the Flock", 1994

Hirst is now fifty-one, and ten years ago he completely gave up smoking, drugs and alcohol - chances are good that his career will last for several decades. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine what could be the next step for an artist of this magnitude - Hirst has already represented his country at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in London, shot a video for the group Blur, made the most expensive work of art in the world (a platinum skull inlaid with diamonds), in workshops on It employs more than one hundred and sixty employees (Andy Warhol never dreamed of this with his “Factory”), and his fortune exceeds a billion dollars. The image of a brawler, which made Hirst famous along with his series of preserved animals in alcohol in the 1990s, gradually gave way to a calmer one: although the artist still loves leather pants and rings with skulls, he has not shown his penis to strangers for a long time, as he did in his “years of military glory.” ”, and looks more and more like a successful entrepreneur than a rock star, although in essence he is both.

Hirst explains his extraordinary commercial success by the fact that he had more motivation to earn money than the rest of the members of the Young British Artists association he headed (while still studying at Goldsmiths, Hirst organized the legendary exhibition “Freeze", which attracted the attention of eminent gallerists to young artists ). Hirst’s childhood cannot be called prosperous and happy: he never saw his biological father, his stepfather left the family when the boy was twelve, and his Catholic mother desperately resisted her son’s attempts to become part of the then very young punk subculture.

Nevertheless, she supported his art pursuits - perhaps out of despair, because Hirst was a difficult teenager and all subjects, except drawing, were difficult for him. Damien regularly got caught with petty shoplifting and other unpleasant stories, but at the same time he managed to make sketches in the local morgue and study medical atlases, which were the source of inspiration for his favorite author, the dark expressionist Francis Bacon. Bacon's paintings greatly influenced Hirst: the grin of the famous shark preserved in alcohol is reminiscent of Bacon's recurring motif of his mouth open in a scream, rectangular aquariums are the cages and pedestals that are constantly found on Bacon's canvases.

A few years ago, Hirst, who had never performed in the field of traditional painting, presented to the public a series of his own paintings, clearly inspired by the works of Bacon, and failed miserably: critics called Hirst’s new works a pathetic parody of the master’s paintings and compared them to “the daub of a freshman who doesn’t give in.” great hopes." These scathing reviews may have hurt the artist's feelings, but they clearly did not affect his productivity: with the help of assistants doing all the routine work, Hirst continues his endless series of canvases with multi-colored dots, "rotational" paintings created by spinning paint cans in a centrifuge, installations with tablets and on an industrial scale produces well-selling works.

← “Untitled AAA”, 1992

Although Hirst always said that money was primarily a means of producing art on a large scale, it cannot be denied that he had an extraordinary talent for entrepreneurship - equal, if not superior in scale, to artistic talent. The Briton, not known for his modesty, believes that everything he touches turns to gold - and this seems to be true: even in the depressed year of 2008, a two-day auction of his works at Sotheby’s organized by Hirst himself exceeded all expectations and broke Picasso’s auction record. Hirst, who looks like a simple guy from Leeds, is not shy about making money on objects that seem alien to high art - be it souvenir skateboards for six thousand dollars or the fashionable London restaurant Pharmacy, decorated in the spirit of the artist’s “pharmacy” series. Buyers of Hirst's works are not only Oxford graduates from good families, but also a new layer of collectors - those who came from the bottom and earned a fortune from scratch, like the artist himself.

Hirst's star status and the dizzying cost of his work often make it difficult to discern their essence - which is a shame, because the ideas contained in them are no less impressive than sawed-up cow carcasses in formaldehyde. Even in what seems to be one hundred percent kitsch, Hirst has an irony: his famous diamond-studded skull, sold for one hundred million dollars, is called “For the Love of God” (an expression that can be literally translated as “In the name of the love of God” is used like the curse of a tired person: “Well, for God’s sake!”). According to the artist, he was prompted to create this work by the words of his mother, who once asked: “God have mercy, what will you do next?” (“For the love of God, what are you going to do next?”). Cigarette butts, laid out in a display case with manic pedantry, are a way of calculating the time of life: like animals in formaldehyde, and a diamond skull, referring to the classic plot of memento mori, smoked cigarettes remind of the frailty of existence, which our mind is not able to grasp with all our desire. And multi-colored mugs, and cigarette butts, and shelves with medicines are an attempt to organize what separates us from death, to express the acuteness of being in this body and in this consciousness, which can end at any moment.

"Claustrophobia/Agoraphobia", 2008

In his interviews, Hirst increasingly says that in his youth he felt eternal, but now the topic of death for him has many other nuances. “Mate, my oldest son, Connor, is sixteen. Several of my friends have already died, and I’m getting old,” explains the artist. “I’m not the same bastard who tried to yell at the whole world anymore.” A convinced atheist, Hirst regularly returns to religious subjects, mercilessly dissecting them and stating over and over again that the existence of God is as impossible as “death in the mind of the living.”

A series of works with living and dead butterflies embody the artist’s thoughts about beauty and its fragility. This idea is most clearly expressed in the installation “Falling in and Out of Love” (“In and Out of Love”): several thousand butterflies hatch from cocoons, live and die in the gallery space, and their bodies stuck to the canvases remain as a reminder of the fragility of beauty. Like the works of the old masters, it is advisable to see Hirst’s works in person at least once: both the memetic “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living” and “Mother and Child Separated” produce a completely different impression if you stand next to them. These and other works from the Natural History series are not provocation for the sake of provocation, but thoughtful and lyrical statements about the fundamental questions of human existence.

As Hirst himself says, in art, as in everything we do, there is only one idea - the search for an answer to the main questions of philosophy: where did we come from, where are we going and does this make sense? A shark preserved in alcohol, inspired by Hirst’s childhood memories of the horror movie “Jaws,” confronts our consciousness with a paradox: why do we feel uneasy next to the carcass of a deadly animal, because we know that it cannot harm us? Is what we feel part of the irrational fear of death that always looms somewhere on the edge of consciousness - and if so, how does it affect our actions and daily life?

Hirst has been repeatedly criticized for his creative methods and harsh statements: for example, in 2002, the artist had to make a public apology for comparing the September 11 terrorist attack to the artistic process. The living classic condemned Hirst for not making his work with his own hands, but using the labor of assistants, and critic Julian Spalding even coined the parody term “Con Art,” which can be translated as “conceptualism for suckers.” It cannot be said that all the indignant cries against Hirst were groundless: the artist was repeatedly accused of plagiarism, and was also accused of artificially inflating prices for his works, not to mention statements by the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights, which was concerned about the conditions of keeping butterflies in the museum . Perhaps the most absurd conflict associated with the name of the scandalous Briton is his confrontation with the sixteen-year-old artist Cartrain, who was selling collages with photographs of Hirst’s work “In the Name of the Love of God.” The multimillionaire artist sued the teenager for two hundred pounds, which he earned from his collages, which caused violent indignation among representatives of the art market.

← “Enchanted”, 2008

Hirst's conceptualism is not as soulless as it might seem: indeed, the artist gives birth to a plan, and dozens of his nameless assistants are involved in its implementation - however, practice shows that Hirst really cares about the fate of his works. The case of that same shark preserved in alcohol, which began to decompose, has become one of the favorite jokes of the art world. Charles Saatchi decided to save the work by stretching the skin of the long-suffering fish onto an artificial frame, but Hirst rejected the redone work, saying that it no longer made such a terrifying impression. As a result, the already damaged installation was sold for twelve million dollars, but at the insistence of the artist the shark was replaced.

Hirst’s friend and YBA colleague Matt Collishaw describes him as “a hooligan and an esthete,” and while the hooligan part is clear, the aesthetic side is often forgotten: perhaps Hirst’s extraordinary artistic flair can only be appreciated in exhibitions of works from his extensive