Damien Hirst

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Damien Hirst curated the widely acclaimed 'Freeze' exhibition in 1988 while still a student at Goldsmiths College. This show launched the careers of many successful young British artists, including his own. Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths in 1989, and has since become the most famous living British artist after David Hockney.

Damien Hirst (born 1965) in UK. Is an artist with the most prominent of the group that has been dubbed "Young British Artists" (or YBA’s) BritArt. He dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990's and is internationally renowned.

Death is a central theme in his work. He is best known for his Natural History series, in which dead animals (such as a shark, a sheep or a cow) are preserved, sometimes cut-up, in formaldehyde. His iconic work is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot Tiger Shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine. Its sale in 2004 made him the second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns. In June 2007, Hirst became the most expensive living artist with the sale of a medicine chest, Lullaby Spring, for £9.65 million at Sotherby’s in London.

In 2007, Hirst outdid his previous sale of Lullaby Spring with For The Love of God which sold for £50 million to an unknown investment group. He is also known for "spin paintings," made on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings," which are rows of randomly-coloured circles; these have been imitated in commercial graphics.

During the 1990's his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the liaison ended.

In 1991, Hirst presented In and Out of Love, an installation for which he filled a gallery with hundreds of live tropical butterflies, some spawned from monochrome canvases on the wall. With The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), his infamous tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde shown at the Saatchi Gallery, Damien Hirst became a media icon and household name. He has since been imitated, parodied, reproached and exalted by the media and public alike.

"Hirst's work is an examination of the processes of life and death: the ironies, falsehoods and desires that we mobilise to negotiate our own alienation and mortality. His production can be roughly grouped into three areas: paintings, cabinet sculptures and the glass tank pieces. The paintings divide into spot and spin paintings. The former are randomly organised, colour-spotted canvases with titles that refer to pharmaceutical chemicals. The spin paintings are painted on a spinning table, so that each individual work is created through centrifugal force. For the cabinet series Hirst displayed collections of surgical tools or hundreds of pill bottles on highly ordered shelves. The tank pieces incorporate dead and sometimes dissected animals - cows, sheep or the shark - preserved in formaldehyde, suspended in death.

Damien Hirst shaped shared ideas and interests quickly and easily, his work developing during the decade [1987-1997] to reflect changes in contemporary life. Relying on the straightforward appeal of colour and form, he made important art that contained little mystery in its construction. Adopting the graphic punch of billboard imagery, his work was arresting at a distance and physically surprising close up. Hirst understood art at its most simple and at its most complex. He reduced painting to its basic elements to eliminate abstraction's mystery. In the age of art as a commodity he made spot paintings - saucer-sized, coloured circles on a white ground - that became luxury designer goods. His art was direct but never empty. In the later spin paintings, which emphasised a renewed interest in a hands-on process of making, Hirst magnified a 'hobby'-art technique, drawing attention to the accidental and expressive energy of the haphazard.

Influenced by Jeff Koons's basketballs floating in water, Hirst's early work used pharmacy medicine cabinets that showed the applied beauty of Modernist design.

A cabinet of individual fish suspended in formaldehyde worked like the spot paintings, as an arrangement of colour, shape and form. This work came to be seen in the popular mind as a symbol of advanced art; overcoming an initial distrust of its ease of assembly, people became fascinated by how ordinary things of the world could be placed so as to be seen as beautiful. The work democratised its meaning, operating as simply as a pop song.

Hirst, understanding Collishaw's coup with the gunshot wound photograph, created work that brought together the joy of life and the inevitability of death, in the process transforming the secrecy of Collishaw's voyeurism into mass spectacle. A scene of pastoral beauty became one of languid death: in In and Out of Love, newly emerged butterflies stuck to freshly painted monochromes; in A Thousand Years, flies emerged from maggots, ate and died, zapped by an insect-o-cutor. Soon, the emphasis changed from an observation of creatures dying to the presentation of dead animals. A shark in a tank of formaldehyde presented a once life-threatening beast as a carcass: the glass box, half hunting trophy, half homage to the Minimalist object, imposed the gravity of a natural history museum onto an outsized council-house ornament. Hirst's sculpture progressed with the Arcadian beauty of a solitary sheep, Away from the Flock, followed by the gothic thrill of the mechanically moving pig. Hirst understood the claustrophobic horror of Francis Bacon’s art, and found surprising parallels in the modern office or the lowly art tradition of portraits of animals. His fascination with the elevation of the commonplace, the unremarkable and the everyday has found Hirst at his most inventive.

By the time work by Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread could be viewed here in New York in any kind of depth, both artists' reputations had long preceded them. We were hypnotised - amazed, up-in-arms, fascinated, threatened - by the flood of images of Hirst's encased shark, images that for several years here remained uncorroborated by any actual objects. The pickled predator remains the very symbol, and with hindsight the warning signal, for the invasion that ensued. Hirst may have been heralded in a timely enough manner, but in fact he did not have a major one-man exhibition in New York until 1996, the year of his much-delayed inaugural at Gagosian. Thus, the surprise of that carnivalesque event was not only its scale but its unexpected variety: from sliced cows and mechanised pig, to Spin-Art paintings, to a giant ashtray full of butts - it had the crazed, cracked energy of a late-'70s Jonathan Borofsky extravaganza gone grizzly-gothic. Almost miraculously, given the US Customs' problems attending Hirst's taxidermical exercises - not to mention the then-fresh panic concerning British beef - the mood at the opening was cheerfully optimistic, indeed quite madly upbeat.

His art teacher "pleaded" for Hirst to be allowed to enter the sixth form, where he took two A-levels, achieving an "E" grade in art. He went to Leeds Collage of Art and Design, although the first time he applied he was refused admission. He worked for two years on London building sites, then studied Fine Art at Goldsmith, University of London (1986–89), although again he was refused a place the first time he applied. While a student, Hirst had a placement at a mortuary, an experience that influenced his later themes and materials.

Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990's: "I started taking cocaine and drink ... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck." During this time he was renowned for his wild behaviour and extrovert acts, including for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists.

He was an habitué of the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behaviour.

In 2002 Hirst gave up smoking and drinking, although the short-term result was that his wife Maia "had to move out because I was so horrible." He had met Joe Strummer (former lead singer of The Clash) at Glastonbury in 1995, becoming good friends and going on annual family holidays with him. Just before Christmas 2002, Strummer died of a heart attack. This had a profound effect on Hirst, who said, "It was the first time I felt mortal." He subsequently devoted a lot of time to founding a charity, Strummerville, to help young musicians. He has also taken an interest in Christianity.

He is married to a Californian, Maia Norman, and has three sons, Connor, born in 1995, Cassius, born in 2000 and Cyrus born in 2007. Since the birth of Connor, he has spent most of his time at his remote farmhouse, a 300 year old former inn, in north Devon.

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Young British Artists or YBAs also Brit artists and Britart a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

Damien Hirst

How to Select Art

The decorating process can be a lengthy one. After countless decisions on everything from wall colour to furniture pieces, drapes to lamps, often times you find that there is still something missing. Your walls are bare. The missing piece? Art.

Art adds to or creates a mood for a room. The first step is easy: select the art you love. Forget about trendy. If it speaks to you, use it. Still life’s, landscapes, photography, portraits... anything can comprise an artistic moment.

Both the subject and the colours used in artwork can greatly influence the overall feeling in your room. Yellows, oranges, and other bright colours can brighten a room, adding energy and cheer to an otherwise solemn décor. Blues, greens, and artwork featuring landscapes or seascapes tend to have a calming effect.

Selecting the perfect piece of art to complete your room can be intimidating. You may question your own art education, or are hesitant to invest a large amount of money in an original piece of art. But you know what you like when you see it, and have a definite opinion about what appeals to you.

First and foremost, it is important to remember that when you’re selecting art, you’re actually selecting a form of expression that is an extension of yourself. While browsing through art, there may be a particular image that catches your eye. You may not even know why. But if something has grabbed your attention in the first place, this is a good indication that you may have already found the piece for your home. The artist, the genre, the style, the medium, are all secondary in importance to your individuality and your style. You know what you like. Trust your judgment.

But in addition, there are a few other things you want to keep in mind that may help you select artwork for your home.

Be aware of the space you are working with. Large paintings can overwhelm small rooms. Conversely, small art can get lost in rooms that are considerably spacious or cluttered with other home accessories. Narrow your search to pieces that are in a particular size range (S, M, or L) that corresponds with your space. This not only helps in the selection process, but also assures appropriate sizing for your decorating needs.

Think about the type of room you’re decorating, and pick the subject or theme of the artwork accordingly.

For example, you might consider hanging sports art in a game room. Sunny breakfast nooks look great with bright floral. Culinary art featuring fruits and vegetables are charming in their natural home: the kitchen.

Finally, keep in mind the overall décor of your room, and select art accordingly. For example, if you have a Victorian living room it would be better to hang say, a floral piece, than something abstract and modern.