Damien Hirst Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector and he is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists these dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valved at £215 million in 2010. 

Death is a central theme in Hirst's work he repeats this theme threw out his artwork. He became famous for a series of artwork 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 (4.3m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a virtrine ( clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s.

He was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting. However Hirst sees his mother as someone who would not tolerate rebellion: she cut up his bondage trousers and heated one of his Sex Pistols vinyl records on the cooker to turn it into a fruit bowl or a plant pot. She did though encourage his liking for drawing which was his only successful educational subject. 

Hirst has become one of the most influential artists of his generation.

Damien Hirst- I've always liked series I remember looking at Robert Motherwells paintings when i was young. Do you know 'splashes by the sea?' I thought it was great. You get some sort of security from the repetition of a series if you say something twice, it’s pretty convincing. Its more convincing than if you say it once. 

One of Hirsts famous pieces was For the love of God (2007) which was a skull coved in diamonds. the reasons why I like this piece of art work is because of the process he has done by coving the skull in diamonds. My view on this piece is that it’s all to do with the value of life and how people take life for granted. For the love of God (2007) is a sculpture and it consists of platinum cast of an 18th century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead that is known as the skull star diamond. The skull's teeth are original. 

The artwork is a memento mori, Latin for 'remember your mortality' or 'remember you must die' this referring to a genre of artwork that vary widely but share the same purpose: to remind people of their mortality, an artistic theme dating back to antiquity.

In 2007, art historian Rudi Fuchs observed: 'the skull is out of this world, celestial almost. It proclaims victory over decay. At the same time it represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanities scene, the diamond skull is glory itself.' 

The skull coasting £14 million to produce. Then an asking price to sell at of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist. 

With all this information about Damien Hirst I have come to an understanding that he doesn’t repeat a process   in his work like some of the other artist I have looked at like Bridget Riley. Hirst repeats the theme of Death by creating new things we he thinks have a link to death. Like what Damien says he get some sort of security from repeating a series and his art work is his series and his series is about the theme death not about the process of how it’s made.