Damien Steven Hirst (; ; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector.Nicholson, Octavia. "Hirst, Damien (Steven)", Oxford Art Online (subscription). Retrieved 9 November 2008. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s."Glossary: Young British Artists (YBA)", Tate Etc.. Retrieved 14 July 2009."Hirst generation missing from Turner prize 2000 shortlist", The Guardian, 14 June 2000. Retrieved 11 September 2009. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List.Richard Brooks, "It's the fame I crave, says Damien Hirst", The Times, 28 March 2010 During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.
Death is a central theme in Hirst's works.Brooks, Richard. "Damien Hirst's earliest painting goes on sale", The Sunday Times, 6 April 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2010. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep, a pig, and a cow) are preserved, sometimes having been dissected, in formaldehyde. The best-known of these is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a clear display case.
In September 2008, Hirst made an unprecedented move for a living artistBarker, Godfrey; Jury, Louise."Even his fag ends sell as Hirst art auction hits £100 million", London Evening Standard, 16 September 2008. Retrieved 22 July 2009. by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and bypassing his long-standing galleries. The auction raised £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.
Since 1999, Hirst's works have been challenged and contested as plagiarised 16 times. In one instance, after his sculpture Hymn was found to be closely based on a child's toy, legal proceedings led to an out-of-court settlement.Dyer, Clare. "Hirst pays up for Hymn that wasn't his", The Guardian, 19 May 2000. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
Early life and training Hirst was born Damien Steven Brennan in Bristol and grew up in Leeds with his Irish mother who worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau. He never met his father; his mother married his stepfather when Hirst was two, and the couple divorced 10 years later. His stepfather was reportedly a motor mechanic.
His mother stated that she lost control of her son when he was young; he was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting. Hirst sees her 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). He says, "If she didn't like how I was dressed, she would quickly take me away from the bus stop". She did, though, encourage his liking for drawing, which was his only successful educational subject.
His art teacher at Allerton Grange School "pleaded" for Hirst to be allowed to enter the sixth form, where he took two A-levels, achieving an "E" grade in art. He was refused admission to Jacob Kramer College when he first applied, but attended the art school after a subsequent successful application to the Foundation Diploma course.
He went to an exhibition of work by Francis Davison, staged by Julian Spalding at the Hayward Gallery in 1983. Davison created abstract collages from torn and cut coloured paper which, Hirst said, "blew me away", and which inspired his own work for the next two years.
He worked for two years on London building sites, then studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College (1986–89), although again he was refused a place the first time he applied. In 2007, Hirst was quoted as saying of An Oak Tree by Goldsmiths' senior tutor, Michael Craig-Martin: "That piece is, I think, the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture. I still can't get it out of my head." While a student, Hirst had a placement at a mortuary, an experience that influenced his later themes and materials.Lewis Schiff, Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons, Harper Collins, 2013, While an art student, Hirst was an assistant at Anthony d'Offays gallery.
Early career—student and warehouse shows
In July 1988, in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship for this event from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of his Goldsmiths lecturer Michael Craig-Martin. Hirst's own contribution to the show consisted of a cluster of cardboard boxes painted with household paint.The Freeze catalogue 1988 After graduating, Hirst was included in New Contemporaries show and in a group show at Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.
Hirst, along with his friend Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman, curated two enterprising "warehouse" shows in 1990, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former Peek Freans biscuit factory they designated "Building One".Rainbird, Sean. "'Are We as a Society Going to Carry on Treating People This Way?' Michael Landy's Scrapheap Services", Tate Gallery, Spring 2004. Retrieved 22 October 2008.Archer, Michael. "Oranges and Lemons and Oranges and Bananas", Acme, 2001. Retrieved 22 October 2008. Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls-Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding on a rotting cow's head."Market News:Counter", The Daily Telegraph, 17 March 2003. Retrieved 22 October 2008. They also staged Michael Landy's Market. At this time, Hirst said, "I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."
Professional career
1987–1990 1987 – Damien Hirst and Holden Rowan, Old Court Gallery, Windsor Arts Centre, Windsor, UK – Curator Derek Culley
1988 – Damien Hirst: Constructions and Sculpture, Old Court Gallery, Windsor, UK -Curator Derek Culley
1988 – Freeze, Surrey Docks, London, UK
1989 – New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
1990 – Modern Medicine, Building One, London, UK
1990 – Gambler, Building One, London, UK
1990 – Building One, Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery, Paris, FR
1991–1994 His first solo exhibition, organised by Tamara Chodzko (now Dial), In and Out of Love, was held in an unused shop on Woodstock Street in central London in 1991;Blanché, Ulrich (2018). Damien Hirst. Gallery Art in a Material World. Baden-Baden, DEU: Tectum Verlag, p. 112. already in 1989 he had been part of a group exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts,Blanché, Ulrich (2018). Damien Hirst. Gallery Art in a Material World. Baden-Baden, DEU: Tectum Verlag, p. 64. and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition Broken English,Blanché, Ulrich (2018). Damien Hirst. Gallery Art in a Material World. Baden-Baden, DEU: Tectum Verlag, p. 71. in part curated by Hirst. In 1991 Hirst met the up-and-coming art dealer, Jay Jopling, who then represented him.Blanché, Ulrich (2018). Damien Hirst. Gallery Art in a Material World. Baden-Baden, DEU: Tectum Verlag, p. 65.
In 1991, Charles Saatchi had offered to fund whatever artwork Hirst wanted to make, and the result was showcased in 1992 in the first Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in North London. Hirst's work was titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and was a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and sold for £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000."Saatchi mulls £6.25m shark offer", BBC. Retrieved 23 February 2007. The exhibition also included In a Thousand Years. As a result of the show, Hirst was nominated for that year's Turner Prize, but it was awarded to Grenville Davey.
Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale in 1993 with the work, Mother and Child Divided, a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines. He curated the show Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he exhibited Away from the Flock (a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde). On 9 May, Mark Bridger, a 35-year-old artist from Oxford, walked into the gallery and poured black ink into the tank, and retitled the work Black Sheep. He was subsequently prosecuted, at Hirst's wish, and was given two years' probation. The sculpture was restored at a cost of £1,000. When a photograph of Away from the Flock was reproduced in the 1997 book by Hirst I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one-to-one, always, forever, now, the vandalism was referenced by allowing the tank to be obscured by pulling a card, reproducing the effect of ink being poured into the tank; this resulted in Hirst being sued by Bridger for violating his copyright on Black Sheep.
In 1994, Hirst wrote and directed an advertisement for TNT UK's 100% Weird television strand. The advert followed a man taking his pet canary for a walk to the local butcher, and featured a slew of surreal and bizarre imagery, including a group of eyeless men playing cards while a skinned dead cow drops onto the floor, a man on a high-rise chair defecating a kidney bean, and a businessman (played by Malcolm McLaren, who also composed the music for the advert) wearing earrings. While TNT were initially "delighted" by the advert, which was intended to play in cinemas and then have brief snippets shown on television, it was eventually rejected due to its "inappropriate" imagery.
1995–1999 In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize. New York public health officials banned Two Fucking and Two Watching featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors". There were solo shows in Seoul, London and Salzburg. He directed the video for the song "Country House" for the band Blur. No Sense of Absolute Corruption, his first solo show in the Gagosian Gallery in New York was staged the following year. In London the short film, Hanging Around, was shown—written and directed by Hirst and starring Eddie Izzard. In 1997 the Sensation exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. A Thousand Years and other works by Hirst were included, but the main controversy occurred over other artists' works. It was nevertheless seen as the formal acceptance of the YBAs into the establishment.Beckett, Andy. "Shock art to shop art", The Guardian, p. T.002, 28 August 1997.