rEmerging into the international art scene in the late 1980s, Damien Hirst is known as one of the late 20th century's greatest provocateurs and has hence become a polarizing figure in recent art history.
As one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, Hirst’s wide-ranging practice includes installation, sculpture, painting, and printmaking, which he uses to express his interest in bridging the gap between art and science.
Described by his mother as a ‘morbid child’, death remains the overarching theme in Hirst’s works. This theme takes centre stage in perhaps his best-known series of artworks, Natural History (1991-2013), which comprises of a sequence of dissected animals, preserved and suspended in formaldehyde. The most famous of which, a submerged 14ft long Tiger shark dubbed The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), is considered one of the most iconic works of British art in the 1990s and has since become an internationally recognisable symbol of Britart.
In 2008 Hirst continued his brow-raising ways by staging an auction for a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby’s. An unprecedented move for a living artist to sell a complete show, the auction broke the record for a one-artist sale by making £111 million ($198 million) over the two days. Other notable works include For the Love of God (2007), a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, inset with the original skull’s teeth, and Lullaby Spring (2002), a cabinet containing holding 6,136 individually painted pills which sold for $19.2 million to the Emir of Qatar.
Damien Hirst's Prints and Editions
Alongside his paintings and installations, Hirst has turned often to the art of printmaking, producing prints using screenprint, giclée and etching processes in collaboration with various publishers and master printers. These editions frequently build upon key themes from his wider practice, translating his sculptural and painted works into serialised, highly controlled printed formats.
Hirst’s print output includes major series such as Cathedral, The Virtues, The Aspects, The Last Supper, with other works focussing on subject-matter which can be seen across his oeuvre including butterflies, skulls, spin- and spot-paintings, and more commercially driven subjects just as Mickey, and Minnie Mouse.
In each of these themes, Hirst explores ideas of repetition, system, chance and colour theory. In particular, the Spot Paintings prints remain among the most recognisable and commercially successful, with individual editions regularly achieving strong results at auction.
Across his print practice, Hirst uses the medium to reinforce his conceptual interest in mass production and seriality, echoing the language of pharmaceutical design, scientific classification and industrial reproduction that runs throughout his wider output.
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