Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst has never shied away from playing the role of the outrageous artist – in fact, this specific take on life and pursuit of art defines his work. Born in 1965, Hirst has been placed in the group of “Young British Artists,” whose works began getting significant attention -- and sale prices -- in the nineties. Attending Leeds College of Art and then Goldsmith’s College, Hirst gained his first notoriety for his Natural History series. This work featured dead animals in tanks, preserved in formaldehyde, some of which were sliced so as to reveal their insides. Natural, beautiful, shocking, and disturbing have all continued to be reactions to Hirst’s work. One of the works in this group, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind Of Someone Living, a fourteen foot shark suspended in a formaldehyde tank, would sell for $12 million in 2004. For over ten years, Hirst’s main collector and supporter was Charles Saatchi. A winner of the Turner Prize in 1995, Hirst continues to court controversy, whether disowning his “spin paintings” and “spot paintings” as those done by assistants who were better at it than he was, or getting a work taken down by New York health officials concerned about visitors vomiting when they saw it. Hirst has also expanded the palette of his work, including directing a video for the group Blur, directing and writing a film staring Eddie Izzard, and forming a band which had a hit in the UK with their song, “Vindaloo”. In 1997, Hirst wrote his autobiography, I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now.
