Friday, March 16, 2007
Damien Hirst Interview
Damien Hirst is currently exhibiting at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills and London. Superstition is a more contemplative, inward looking Hirst than usual. He is looking to poetry and religion for inspiration rather than the usual death, medicine, and shock that has made the artist who he is.
"Each painting in Damien Hirst: Superstition has two titles, the first taken from the poems in Philip Larkin's collection High Windows. Larkin was an English poet whose fatalistic, colloquial writings speak to a seemingly shared extinguished faith. The second title makes direct reference to religious iconography." Gagosian Gallery
ArtInfo caught up with the aging artist that seems to be taking a break from Shock. Here's a few Damien Hirst quotes from the interview at ArtInfo.
Damien Hirst is currently exhibiting at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills and London. Superstition is a more contemplative, inward looking Hirst than usual. He is looking to poetry and religion for inspiration rather than the usual death, medicine, and shock that has made the artist who he is."Each painting in Damien Hirst: Superstition has two titles, the first taken from the poems in Philip Larkin's collection High Windows. Larkin was an English poet whose fatalistic, colloquial writings speak to a seemingly shared extinguished faith. The second title makes direct reference to religious iconography." Gagosian Gallery
ArtInfo caught up with the aging artist that seems to be taking a break from Shock. Here's a few Damien Hirst quotes from the interview at ArtInfo.
- I did a load of medicine cabinets a long time ago and I named them after Sex Pistols songs. I suppose I must be getting old if I’m naming work after Philip Larkin poems.
Damien Hirst Quote - I was brought up a Catholic, but I don’t believe in God. I think I’m an atheist. Hardcore atheist. I’m trying to be a hardcore atheist, and then I keep making work like this.
Damien Hirst Quote - As an artist you’re looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I’m striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they’ve swallowed a fucking dictionary.
Damien Hirst Quote
>> Damien Hirst News, Art Exhibitions
¶ 6:24 PM
I love this series of work and his willingness to explore new images and moods. I bet they are stunning to see in the real. thanks for sharing this with us.
Yeah, I like this side of Damien Hirst more than the dead shark side of the artist Jafabrit.
They still have a little of the morbid Hirst in them too though as he uses butterflies and paint to create them.
Theyre some of the prettiest works I have seen by him.
Dion
They still have a little of the morbid Hirst in them too though as he uses butterflies and paint to create them.
Theyre some of the prettiest works I have seen by him.
Dion
hum, yes you are right, very pretty, and yet they still retain his dark side. Beauty in death, death disguised,death transformed, captured for eternity.
I stopped in and saw this show on Saturday. It's pretty incredible. I especially liked the way the works in the back gallery were installed. They painted the walls the same dark colors as the frames (the walls in the main gallery were left white), so it really felt like being in a dark church w/ light coming in the stained glass windows. Seems that this new work still deals very much w/ death, as in thousand of butterflies. But with these pieces your first impression is awe at the beauty, rather than shock.
Damien Hirst controversy
by Steve Erickson, 02.21.07 04:33 pm
Before it has even opened, there’s a growing controversy in Los Angeles regarding the pending exhibition by Damien Hirst at Gagosian Gallery, and the the similarities between Hirst’s work (supertouchblog.com/?p=2431) and that of L.A.-based artist Lori Precious
(www.loriprecious.com/images/sculpture.html),
whose almost identical pieces have been in museums and galleries from London to New York to L.A. for more than ten years, including a one-woman show back in the Nineties. While “appropriation” is the vogue in contemporary culture, more than almost any other recent instance this raises the question of when something stops being appropriation and becomes something more dishonest. Hirst uses the exact same material (butterfly wings), wedded to the exact same idea (recreations of stained-glass windows) and the exact same form (mandala) — all to the exact same end as Precious’ work. There was a posting about this yesterday at Coagula, one of L.A.’s more prominent art sites (coagula.livejournal.com), and reportedly the Los Angeles Times is considering a follow-up story to one that ran this past weekend. This is not the first time questions have been raised about the “originality” and “authenticity” of Hirst’s work, including his famous shark piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” which “borrowed” heavily from a very similar piece by Eddie Saunders done years before.
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by Steve Erickson, 02.21.07 04:33 pm
Before it has even opened, there’s a growing controversy in Los Angeles regarding the pending exhibition by Damien Hirst at Gagosian Gallery, and the the similarities between Hirst’s work (supertouchblog.com/?p=2431) and that of L.A.-based artist Lori Precious
(www.loriprecious.com/images/sculpture.html),
whose almost identical pieces have been in museums and galleries from London to New York to L.A. for more than ten years, including a one-woman show back in the Nineties. While “appropriation” is the vogue in contemporary culture, more than almost any other recent instance this raises the question of when something stops being appropriation and becomes something more dishonest. Hirst uses the exact same material (butterfly wings), wedded to the exact same idea (recreations of stained-glass windows) and the exact same form (mandala) — all to the exact same end as Precious’ work. There was a posting about this yesterday at Coagula, one of L.A.’s more prominent art sites (coagula.livejournal.com), and reportedly the Los Angeles Times is considering a follow-up story to one that ran this past weekend. This is not the first time questions have been raised about the “originality” and “authenticity” of Hirst’s work, including his famous shark piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” which “borrowed” heavily from a very similar piece by Eddie Saunders done years before.
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