Artist Center: Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is a member of the Young British Artists group. Hirst’s work is creepy, weird, foreboding, and everything else that is associated with those words. His work is centered on death, a subject most people try and avoid in our everyday lives.

Hirst’s work shows us the relationship we have with death. How we are separated from it, fear it, and just don’t want to look at it. He forces us to look at it, in every detail possible. He uses dead animals such as sheep, sharks, and cows and displays them in glass boxes. This forces us to look at the animals as if they were alive, or even if they were fake, but knowing they are real in their tanks. When we are looking at his art, we have no choice but to look at the objects he has presented to us in what fashion they are presented, and accept it. Once we get past the idea that these subjects are dead, we can start to appreciate the detail they provide us and learn to look at them in a new light.

His artwork became an icon in the 1990’s and was the face of the Young British Artists. Hirst has also worked with other materials, such as he has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly colored circles. Though he has done other art, he is most well-known for his pieces done with animals. Hirst has shown us a new way to look at life, even if it is threw a glass box.