Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst
Born: June 7, 1965
England
Damien Hirst first broke onto the scene in 1990 when he exhibited at the Modern Medicine and Gambler show in a former factory designed by the artists entitled "Building One" His first major installation with animals was exhibited here. A Thousand Years consisted of a large glass case containing a rotting cow's head being eaten by maggots and fleas. Charles Saatchi, renowned gallery owner and art collector was at this show and was amazed by Hirst's work. It was here that he bought this piece which catapulted Hirst's career making him internationally renown and a dominate artist of the art scene in Britain in the 1990’s


Damien Hirst attended Leed's College of Art and Design after being initially refused admission. He later went on to study Fine Art at Goldsmith's College, the University of London where he spent time at a mortuary which would later have a great influence on his work.

As a media artist, Damien Hirst uses death as a central theme throughout his work. His fascination with mortality is evident throughout his entire Natural History series.
His Natural History series, his best known new media work, consists of dead animals preserved as momento mori, sometimes disected in formaldehyde. These animals are presented in forms not of art but apropirated by the Musuem of Natural History. His most famouse piece, A 14ft tiger shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death In the Mind of Someone Living, presented in a vitrine would late sell to make him the second most expensive living artist next to Jasper Johns.





Unlike that of A Thousand Years, Hirst goes to great lengths to preserve his animals. Even though he knows the corpse will eventually rot anyways, he insists that the idea is more important than the actual piece. Hirst's unemotional attachment to the animals he uses sometimes leads to what some would call sick humor. With This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed Home, each half of bisected pig in formaldehyde slid past one another on a track. Separating and then moving back and forth into place. When asked about this piece he responded with “I hope that it makes people think about things that they take for granted. Like smoking, like sex, like love, like life, like advertising, like death...I want to make people frightened of what they know. I want to make them question."
(http://dh.ryoshuu.com/biography.html)


Damien Hirst has always succeeded in gaining attention critically with his work, good and bad. Many have objected to his used of animals in his Natural History series. He received thousands of letters of protest and threats. It is not only the public that has given him trouble for his work. He has run into numerous troubles upon exhibiting in the U. S. In 1995 a New York gallery banned Two Fucking, Two Watching, a dead cow and bull having sex by means of a hydraulic device. The piece was not preserved but left to rot, leaving the New York health officials concerned that it might "explode" or cause visitors to vomit. He replaced this piece with another piece that was preserved, and wouldn’t cause viewers to vomit due to smell.


Damien Hirst continues to making art with new media. He has worked with many assistants over the years and has since due to the volume of work he is producing, taken on a factory as a studio. His most recent piece, The Death of God (2006), household gloss on canvas, human skull, knife, coin and sea shells, is part of a group of painting that were created in Mexico. Many believe this to be the start of Hirst’s “Mexican period”. Prior to this piece Hirst has made a new version of the shark, The Wrath of God in 2005 and numerous other pieces including bull’s hearts, human skulls, and formaldehyde solutions.

New Media Art

New media is an art form that is everywhere and utilized by artists all the time. New media art is, in a broad sense, art that is related to or created with technology. Art involving audio, video, software, performance, visuals and text, animation are all forms of new media art. New media art is an expression of how artists are ever changing and adapting to the new technologies and realizing the cultural, social, and physical potential of new communication in our everyday lives such as the web, video surveillance cameras, wireless phones, hand held computers, GPS and so on. The possibilities of working with new media are endless in our technology hungry age. With each new form of communication, a new means of communication art emerges.
In thinking about what new media art is, I immediately think of how I have used it throughout the majority of my academic career at Mass Art. People learn through communication, therefore artists learn through communication. New media art progresses through collaboration and the free sharing of ideas. In researching and communicating an idea either through video, the web, or any form of technology I am creating new media art. I noticed through viewing various forms of new media art that this art form frequently addresses political consequence of technology around issues of identity, commercialization, and privacy. This seems to be an especially crucial aspect of new media art today because the times that we are currently living in.