Talbot Ave, Leeds LS8 1AQ, United Kingdom
In his early years, Damien studied at Allerton Grange School.
8 Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom
In 1986, the artist entered Goldsmiths, University of London, since his application was rejected the first time he applied. Damien studied at the university until 1989, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Blenheim Walk, Leeds LS2 9AQ, United Kingdom
The artist attended Jacob Kramer College (present-day Leeds Arts University).
Newport St, Lambeth, London SE11 6AJ, United Kingdom
In 2015, Hirst opened the Newport Street Gallery in London.
Damien Hirst at the exhibition "Damien Hirst The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011".
Hirst and his "Veil Paintings".
Damien Hirst with Kate Moss.
Talbot Ave, Leeds LS8 1AQ, United Kingdom
In his early years, Damien studied at Allerton Grange School.
Blenheim Walk, Leeds LS2 9AQ, United Kingdom
The artist attended Jacob Kramer College (present-day Leeds Arts University).
8 Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom
In 1986, the artist entered Goldsmiths, University of London, since his application was rejected the first time he applied. Damien studied at the university until 1989, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Newport St, Lambeth, London SE11 6AJ, United Kingdom
In 2015, Hirst opened the Newport Street Gallery in London.
Damien Hirst at the exhibition "Damien Hirst The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011".
Hirst and his "Veil Paintings".
Damien Hirst with Kate Moss.
(A provocative collection of Damien Hirst's ideas and obse...)
A provocative collection of Damien Hirst's ideas and obsessions, created in collaboration with designer Jonathan Barnbrook. Pieces of his artwork are set against a visual narrative of drawings, words, photography, typography, pop-ups and other special effects. An essay by novelist Gordon Burn looks at Hirst's work and the breadth of its impact.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1873968442/?tag=2022091-20
1988
("Damien Hirst: Colouring Book" features the British artis...)
"Damien Hirst: Colouring Book" features the British artist’s most iconic works, rendered as simple line drawings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906967776/?tag=2022091-20
2016
artist entrepreneur art collector
Damien Hirst was born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol, United Kingdom. His family moved to Leeds shortly after he was born, where he spent much of his childhood. When Damien was twelve years old, his parents divorced and the boy was raised exclusively by his mother.
In his early years, Damien studied at Allerton Grange School. Later, he attended Jacob Kramer College (present-day Leeds Arts University).
In 1986, the artist finally entered Goldsmiths, University of London, since his application was rejected the first time he applied. Damien studied at the university until 1989, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
While at Goldsmiths, he became intensely absorbed in his studies, and quickly became a prominent member of the student community, organizing different student-run events.
While still a student of Goldsmiths, University of London, Damien worked at a mortuary in his native city of Leeds during his summer breaks at the university. This experience would strongly influence the themes and materials he later utilized as an artist. Hirst occasionally drew specimens and cadavers and the job also provided him with the technical knowledge the artist would later use to transform biological specimens into sculptures.
When Damien was a sophomore at Goldsmiths, he acted as a lead organizer of a group exhibition, called "Freeze". The show would mark a turning point in his career. In addition to his own work, the show included pieces by sixteen fellow students, including Fiona Rae, Sarah Lucas and other emerging talents in postmodernist art. This show was held in an inexpensive warehouse space in London's Docklands and was attended by a number of influential people in the British art scene, including Norman Rosenthal of the British Academy, Nicholas Serota, a director of the Tate museums and galleries and Charles Saatchi, then-owner of the world's largest advertising firm, who ran his own London gallery.
In 1991, Saatchi became Hirst's patron, offering to fund whatever the artist chose to produce. Damien's first Saatchi-funded work was titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", a large installation piece, featuring a preserved tiger shark in a large glass case. Also, this work won Hirst a nomination for the Turner Prize, given to contemporary British artists under 50. Despite the fact, that the artist did not win the award, he would eventually receive it in 1995. In 2003, Damien ended his collaboration with his patron Saatchi.
In the early 1990's, Damien was recognized a controversial figure in the contemporary art world for his most famous and hotly debated pieces, featuring preserved, dead animals. By the late 1990's, Hirst had become a key figure in British art and culture. He directed the music video for "Country House" by the hugely popular band Blur, and wrote and directed a short film, starring comedian Eddie Izzard. His lofty status within contemporary British art was cemented by 1997's Sensation show at London's Royal Academy, an event, which critics have since regarded as the formal acceptance of the Young British Artists' into the mainstream.
In 1997, Hirst collaborated on Pharmacy Restaurant and Bar in London, for which he designed the interior, transforming his work into an immersive environment. Since the early 2000's, the artist has produced ambitious, captivating works, ranging from the kaleidoscopic butterfly paintings, made by placing thousands of butterfly wings in intricate geometric patterns onto painted canvases, to "For the Love of God" (2007), a platinum cast of a human skull, set with 8,601 diamonds.
Hirst’s first major retrospective, "The Agony and the Ecstasy", was presented by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy, in 2004, and he was recognized in 2012 with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. The same year, in 2012, the artist showed what went on to be one of his most controversial work in decades, the installation "In and Out of Love", which consisted of two white windowless rooms, in which over 9,000 butterflies flitted around and died. In 2015, Hirst opened the Newport Street Gallery in London, showcasing his personal collection of over 3,000 works of art.
Also, in 2017, he exhibited his monumental, fantastical sculptures, made of precious metals and stones, covered in illusionistic barnacles, at the show "Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable", that took place in the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice. Moreover, the same year, Damien started to work on his Veil paintings, in which he examined the color and its effects on the eye.
In addition to making art, Hirst writes books, collaborates on pop music projects and experiments with film. Currently, the artist lives and works in London.
Damien Hirst gained prominence for his nontrivial series of artworks, in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved — sometimes having been dissected — in formaldehyde. He is the artist, who helped to boost his country’s place in the international art world.
Damien's groundbreaking works include "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (1991), "Mother and Child Divided" (1993) and "For the Love of God" (2007). In addition to his installations and sculptures, Hirst’s Spot paintings and Butterfly paintings have become universally recognized.
In September 2008, the artist took an unprecedented step for a living artist by selling a complete show, "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever", exclusively by auction at Sotheby's. It set a world record for the highest proceeds at auction by a living artist, 70.5 million pounds. Even as the global financial markets were crumbling, the auction helped to make Hirst one of the richest artists in the world.
Also, in 1995, Hirst received Turner Prize.
Today, his works are kept in the collections of numerous mueseums and galleries, including the Tate Gallery in London, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and others.
(A provocative collection of Damien Hirst's ideas and obse...)
1988("Damien Hirst: Colouring Book" features the British artis...)
2016
Quotations:
"People are afraid of change, so you create a kind of belief for them through repetition. It’s like breathing. I’ve always been drawn to series and pairs. A unique thing is quite a frightening object."
"I want to make art, create objects that will have meaning forever. It's a big ambition, universal truth, but somebody's gotta do it."
"Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down. Art comes from everywhere."
"I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigor and energy. The fact that flowers don't last forever makes them beautiful."
"Great art — or good art — is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different."
"I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon."
"I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age — seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction."
"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."
"The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact."
Hirst is a member of Young British Artists group.
Damien Hirst enjoys his solitude and prefers to work alone. He needs time to contemplate his ideas without the intrusion of other people's thoughts. He is a lone wolf and a person, who lives by his own ideas and methods. As a result, close associations are difficult for Damien to form and keep, especially marriage.
During the period from 1992 till 2012, Damien lived with his girlfriend, Maia Norman, a fashion designer. Despite the fact, that the couple never married, their relationships produced three sons — Connor Ojala, Cassius Atticus and Cyrus Joe.
