Conceptualism is a philosophical theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind.^[1] Intermediate between Nominalism and Realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical concept of universals from a perspective that denies their presence in particulars outside of the mind's perception of them. ^[2]

Conceptualism in scholasticism[link]

The evolution of late scholastic terminology has led to the emergence of Conceptualism, which stemmed from doctrines that were previously considered to be nominalistic. The terminological distinction was made in order to stress the difference between the claim that universal mental acts correspond with universal intentional objects and the perspective that dismissed the existence of universals outside of the mind. The latter perspective of rejection of objective universality was distinctly defined as Conceptualism.

Peter Abélard was a medival thinker whose work is currently classified as having the most potential in representing the roots of conceptualism. Abélard’s view denied the existence of determinate universals within things, proposing the claim that meaning is constructed solely by the virtue of conception.^[3] William Ockham was another famous late medieval thinker who had a strictly conceptualist solution to the metaphysical problem of universals. He argued that abstract concepts have no fundamentum outside the mind, and that the purpose they serve is the construction of meaning in an otherwise meaningless world.^[4]

In the 17th century conceptualism gained favour for some decades especially among the Jesuits: Hurtado de Mendoza, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Francisco Oviedo are the main figures. Although the order soon returned to the more realist philosophy of Francisco Suárez, the ideas of these Jesuits had a great impact on the contemporary early modern thinkers.

Modern conceptualism[link]

Conceptualism was either explicitly or implicitly embraced by most of the early modern thinkers like René Descartes, John Locke or Gottfried Leibniz – often in a quite simplified form if compared with the elaborate Scholastic theories. Sometimes the term is applied even to the radically different philosophy of Kant, who holds that universals have no connection with external things because they are exclusively produced by our a priori mental structures and functions.^[5] However, this application of the term "conceptualism" is not very usual, since the problem of universals can, strictly speaking, be meaningfully raised only within the framework of the traditional, pre-Kantian epistemology.

See also[link]

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Conceptualism.

• Problem of universals
• Pierre Abélard
• Conceptual art
• Lyco art (Lyrical Conceptualism), term coined by artist Paul Hartal
• Philosophical realism

References[link]

Jan Dibbets (born 9 May 1941, Weert), is a Dutch conceptual artist.

In 1994, he was commissioned by the Arago Association to create a memorial to the French astronomer François Arago, known as Hommage à Arago. Dibbets set 135 bronze medallions into the ground along the Paris Meridian between the north and south limits of Paris.

Dibbets works are included in museums around the world, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, De Pont Gallery in Tilburg, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.

References[link]

Additional reading[link]

• Jeffery Kastner and Brian Wallis (editors): Land and Environmental Art. Phaidon Press, 1998. ISBN 0-7148-4519-1
• Rudi Fuchs and Gloria Moure: Jan Dibbets, Interior Light. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. ISBN 0-8478-1429-7

External links[link]

• UBU Web
• Gladstone Gallery representing Dibbets in the US
• Dutch Light

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Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968; French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl dyˈʃɑ̃]) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.^[6]

Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain, though in a 1917 letter to his sister Duchamp indicates that a female friend, possibly the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, conceived of the urinal as sculpture and sent it to him under the pseudonym Richard Mutt.^[7] Duchamp produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. - Marcel Duchamp^[8]

Life[link]

Marcel Duchamp's parents' house in Blainville-Crevon.

Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint, and make music together.

Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp's seven children, one died as an infant and four became successful artists. Marcel Duchamp was the brother of:

• Jacques Villon (1875–1963), painter, printmaker
• Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), sculptor
• Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter.

As a child, with his two older brothers already away from home at school in Rouen, Duchamp was close to his sister Suzanne, who was a willing accomplice in games and activities conjured by his fertile imagination. At 10 years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, in Rouen. For the next 7 years, he was locked into an educational regime which focused on intellectual development. Though he was not an outstanding student, his best subject was mathematics and he won two mathematics prizes at the school. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become an artist.

He learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to protect his students from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other avant-garde influences. However, Duchamp's true artistic mentor at the time was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid and incisive style he sought to imitate. At 14, his first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he also painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils.

Duchamp was throughout his adult life a passionate smoker of Habana cigars^[9]

Early work[link]

Duchamp's early art works align with Post-Impressionist styles. He experimented with classical techniques and subjects, as well as with Cubism and Fauvism. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Duchamp cited the work of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual.

He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes. During this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons which reflected his ribald humor. Many of the drawings use visual and/or verbal puns. Such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life.

In 1905, he began his compulsory military service, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned typography and printing processes – skills he would use in his later work.

Due to his eldest brother Jacques' membership in the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Duchamp's work was exhibited in the 1908 Salon d'Automne. The following year his work was featured in the Salon des Indépendants. Of Duchamp's pieces in the show, critic Guillaume Apollinaire--who was to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes." Duchamp also became lifelong friends with exuberant artist Francis Picabia after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d' Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and 'high' living.

In 1911, at Jacques' home in Puteaux, the brothers hosted a regular discussion group with other artists and writers including Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Roger de la Fresnaye, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, and Alexander Archipenko. The group came to be known as the Puteaux Group, and the artists' work was dubbed Orphic cubism. Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory, and gained a reputation of being shy. However, that same year he painted in a Cubist style, and added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery.

During this period Duchamp's fascination with transition, change, movement and distance became manifest, and like many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting a "Fourth dimension" in art.

Works from this period included his first "machine" painting, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café) (1911), which he gave to his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The Coffee Mill shows similarity to the "grinder" mechanism of the Large Glass he was to paint years later.

In his 1911, Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) there is the Cubist overlapping frames and multiple perspectives of his two brothers playing chess, but to that Duchamp added elements conveying the unseen mental activity of the players. (Notably, "échec" is French for "failure".)

Nude Descending a Staircase No.2[link]

Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.

He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist Salon des Indépendants, but jurist Albert Gleizes asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or to paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Duchamp quietly refused. Of the incident Duchamp later recalled, "I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that."^[10]

He later submitted the painting to the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York City. The exhibition was officially named the International Exhibition of Modern Art, displayed works of American artists, and was also the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the Nude was at the center of much of the controversy.

Leaving "retinal art" behind[link]

At about this time, Duchamp read Max Stirner's philosophical tract, The Ego and Its Own, the study of which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "...a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."^{[citation needed]}

While in Germany in 1912, he painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings and he started "Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" image, and began making plans for The Large Glass – scribbling short notes to himself, sometimes with hurried sketches. It would be over 10 years before this piece was completed. Little else is known about the two-month stay in Germany except that the friend he visited was intent on showing him the sights and the nightlife.

The same year, Duchamp also attended a performance of a stage adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.

Towards the end of 1912, he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the Jura mountains, an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art.".^[11] Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.

Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "painterly" effects, and instead to use a technical drawing approach.

His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend Constantin Brâncuşi, "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?".^[11] Brâncuşi later sculpted bird forms, which U.S. Customs officials mistook for aviation parts and for which they attempted to collect import duties.

In 1913, Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliotèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his Large Glass. He studied math and physics – areas in which exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality",Poincaré wrote in 1902.^[12] Reflecting the influence of Poincaré's writings, Duchamp tolerated any interpretation of his art by regarding it as the creation of the person who formulated it, not as truth.^[13]

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's School of the Thread, part of a book on classical mechanics.

In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. It is often assumed that the Bicycle Wheel represents Duchamp's first of his "Readymades", this particular installation was never submitted for any art exhibition, and was eventually lost. However, initially, the wheel was simply placed in the studio to create atmosphere: "I enjoyed looking at it just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace."^[14]

After World War I was declared in 1914, with his brothers and many friends in military service and himself exempted, Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. Meanwhile, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 had scandalized Americans at the Armory Show, and helped secure the sale of all four of his paintings in the show. Thus, being able to finance the trip, Duchamp decided to emigrate to the United States in 1915.To his surprise, he found he was a celebrity when he arrived in New York in 1915, where he quickly befriended art patron Katherine Dreier and artist Man Ray. Duchamp's circle included art patrons Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist Beatrice Wood and Francis Picabia, as well as other avant-garde figures. Though he spoke little English, in the course of supporting himself by giving French lessons and through some library work, he quickly learned the language.

For two years the Arensbergs, who would remain his friends and patrons for 42 years, were the landlords of his studio. In lieu of rent, they agreed that his payment would be The Large Glass. An art gallery offered Duchamp $10,000 per year in exchange for all of his yearly production, but Duchamp declined the offer, preferring to continue his work on The Large Glass.

Société Anonyme[link]

Duchamp created the Société Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray. This was the beginning of his life-long involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures throughout the 1930s.

By this time Walter Pach, one of the coordinators of the 1913 Armory Show, sought Duchamp's advice on modern art. Beginning with Société Anonyme, Dreier also depended on Duchamp's counsel in gathering her collection, as did Arensberg. Later Peggy Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art directors Alfred Barr and James Johnson Sweeney consulted with Duchamp on their modern art collections and shows.

Dada[link]

This section called "Dada" needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

Fountain 1917

New York Dada had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend Picabia connected with the Dada group in Zürich, bringing to New York the Dadaist ideas of absurdity and "anti-art." Duchamp and Picabia first met in September 1911 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where they were both exhibiting. Duchamp showed a larger version of his Young Man and Girl in Spring 1911, a work that had an Edenic theme and a thinly veiled sexuality also found in Picabia's contemporaneous Adam and Eve 1911. According to Duchamp, 'our friendship began right there." ^[15] A group met almost nightly at the Arensberg home, or caroused in Greenwich Village. Together with Man Ray, Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his Readymades and The Large Glass.

The most prominent example of Duchamp's association with Dada was his submission of Fountain, a urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that Fountain was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar amongst the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.^[16]

Along with Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood, Duchamp published a Dada magazine in New York, titled The Blind Man, which included art, literature, humor and commentary.

When he returned to Paris after World War I, Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.

Readymades[link]

"Readymades" were found objects which Duchamp chose and presented as art. In 1913, Duchamp installed a Bicycle Wheel in his studio. However, the idea of Readymades did not fully develop until 1915. The idea was to question the very notion of Art, and the adoration of art, which Duchamp found "unneccessary"^[17]

My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see.^[17]

Bottle Rack (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. Prelude to a Broken Arm (1915), a snow shovel, also called In Advance of the Broken Arm, followed soon after. His Fountain, a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917. Fountain was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.^[18]

In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription L.H.O.O.Q., a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul". This can be translated as "She has a hot ass", implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with Arturo Schwarz.

According to Rhonda Roland Shearer, the apparent Mona Lisa reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face.^[19] Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to be "found objects".

[edit] The Large Glass

Duchamp worked on his complex Futurism inspired piece The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) from 1915 to 1923, with the exception of periods in Buenos Aires and Paris in 1918–1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. He published notes for the piece, The Green Box, intended to complement the visual experience. They reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.

The piece was inspired by a performance of the stage adaptation of Roussel's novel Impressions d'Afrique which Duchamp attended in 1912. Notes, sketches and plans for the work were drawn on Duchamp's studio walls as early as 1913. In order to concentrate on the work free from material obligations, Duchamp found work as a librarian while living in France. After emigrating to the United States in 1915, he commenced his work on the piece financed by the support of the Arensbergs.

The piece is partially constructed as a retrospective of Duchamp's works, including a three dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings Bride (1912), Chocolate Grinder (1914) and Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals (1913–1915), which has opened for numerous interpretations. The work was formally declared "Unfinished" in 1923. Going home from its first public exhibition, the glass broke in its shipping crate and received a large crack in the glass. Duchamp repaired it, but left the cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

Until 1969 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art revealed Duchamp's Etant donnés tableau, The Large Glass was thought to have been his last major work.

Kinetic works[link]

Duchamp's interest in kinetic works can be discerned as early as the notes for The Large Glass and the Bicycle Wheel readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art", he retained interest in visual phenomena.

In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics"). The piece, which he did not consider to be art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, an optical illusion occurs, in which the segments appear to be closed concentric circles.

Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine on for the second time, a belt broke, and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits.^[20]

After moving back to Paris in 1923, at André Breton's urging and through the financing of Jacques Doucet, Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one, Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half, with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins, the circles appear to move backwards and forwards in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.^[21].

Rotoreliefs were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys", he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. He had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring three-dimensional stereoscopic sight to people who have lost vision one eye.^[22]

In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs and they named the film Anémic Cinéma (1926).

Later, in Alexander Calder's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called "mobiles". Calder agreed to use this novel term in his upcoming show. To this day, sculptures of this type are called "mobiles."^[23]

Musical Ideas[link]

Between 1912 and 1915, Duchamp worked with various musical ideas. At least three pieces have survived: two compositions and a note for a musical happening. The two compositions are based on chance operations. Erratum Musical, written for three voices, was published in 1934. La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical is unfinished and was never published or exhibited during Duchamp's lifetime. According to the manuscript, the piece was intended for a mechanical instrument "in which the virtuoso intermediary is suppressed". The manuscript also contains a description for "An apparatus automatically recording fragmented musical periods", consisting of a funnel, several open-end carss and a set of numbered balls.^[24] These pieces predate John Cage's Music of Changes (1951), which is often considered the first modern piece to be conceived largely through random procedures.^[25]

In 1968, Duchamp and John Cage appeared together at a concert entitled "Reunion", playing a game of chess and composing Aleatoric music by triggering a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard.^[26]

Rrose Sélavy[link]

Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp). 1921. Photograph by Man Ray. Art Direction by Marcel Duchamp. Silver print. 5-7/8" x 3"-7/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"Rrose Sélavy", also spelled Rose Sélavy, was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which may be translated as "Eros, such is life." It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life").

Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it. These included at least one sculpture, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy? (1921). The sculpture, a type of readymade called an assemblage, consists of an oral thermometer, and several dozen small cubes of marble resembling sugar cubes inside a birdcage.

The inspiration for the name "Rrose Sélavy" may have been Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's librarian of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Following the death of J.P. Morgan, Sr., Greene became the Library's director, working there for a total of forty-three years. Empowered by the Morgans, she built the library collection, buying and selling rare manuscripts, books and art.^{[citation needed]}

Transition from art to chess[link]

In 1918, Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, where he remained for nine months and often played chess. He even carved from wood his own chess set, with the assistance of a local craftsman who made the knights. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist although he did work on several projects towards his death. Instead, his main interest was now chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp can be seen, very briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film Entr'acte (1924) by René Clair. He designed the 1925 Poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3–3, with two draws). Thus he earned the title of chess master. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the board. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and also in the Chess Olympiads from 1928–1933, favoring hypermodern openings such as the Nimzo-Indian.

Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered correspondence chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed, "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."^{[citation needed]} On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."^{[citation needed]}

In 1932, Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as corresponding squares. This treatise describes the Lasker-Reichhelm position, an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the endgame. Using enneagram-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a draw.

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude towards his artistic career. Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, Endgame In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion." Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.^[26]

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."^[27] Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Levi's gallery exhibition "Through the Big End of the Opera Glass", printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win." Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.^[28]

Artistic involvement and marriages[link]

Although Duchamp was no longer considered to be an active artist, he continued to consult with artists, art dealers and collectors. From 1925 he often traveled between France and the United States, and made New York's Greenwich Village his home in 1942. He also occasionally worked on artistical projects such as the short film Anemic Cinema (1926), Box in a Valise (1935–41), Self Portrait in Profile (1958) and the larger work Etant Donnés (1946–66).

In June 1927, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a marriage of convenience, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and soon thereafter they were divorced.^[29]

From the mid-1930s onwards, he collaborated with the Surrealists, however, he did not join the movement despite the coaxing of André Breton. From then until 1944, together with Max Ernst, Eugenio Granell and Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical VVV, and also served as an advisory editor for the magazine View, which featured him in its March 1945 edition, thus introducing him to a broader American audience.

In 1954, he and Alexina "Teeny" Sattler married, and they remained together until his death. Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.

His influence on the art world remained behind the scenes until the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by young artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who were eager to escape the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. He was a co-founder of the international literary group Oulipo in 1960.

Interest in Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition. 1963 saw his first retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, and in 1966 the Tate Gallery hosted a large exhibit of his work. Other major institutions, including the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed, with large showings of Duchamp's work. He was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications.

As the last surviving member of the Duchamp family of artists, in 1967 Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called "Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp." Parts of this family exhibition were later shown again at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Exhibition design[link]

Duchamp was the designer of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, which was held at the Gallerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show featured more than 60 artists from different countries, including approximately 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations.

The surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act, and called on Duchamp to do so. At the exhibition's entrance he placed Salvador Dalí's Rainy Taxi This work consisted of a taxicab rigged to produce a drizzle of water down the inside of the windows, a shark-headed creature in the driver's seat, and a blond mannequin crawling with live snails in the back. In this way Duchamp greeted entering patrons, who were in full evening dress.

Surrealist Street filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various surrealists. The main hall was a simulation of a dark subterranean cave with 1,200 coal bags suspended from the ceiling. Illumination was provided only by a single light bulb,^[30] so patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art.

An installation by Wolfgang Paalen was composed of oak leaves and a water-filled pond with water lilies and reeds, while the aroma of roasting coffee filled the air. Around midnight, the visitors witnessed the dancing shimmer of a sparsely dressed girl who suddenly arose from the reeds, jumped on a bed, shrieked hysterically, then disappeared just as quickly. Much to the surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers.

In 1942, for the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York, surrealists again called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. This time he wove a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.^[31] Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the finely dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. When questioned, the children were told to say "Mr. Duchamp told us we could play here." Duchamp's design of the catalog for the show included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.

[edit] Etant donnés

Duchamp's final major art work surprised the art world that believed he had given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Entitled Etant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"), it is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door.[2] A nude woman can be seen lying on her back with her face hidden, legs spread, and one hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop.[3] Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his Greenwich Village studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art.

Death and burial[link]

Duchamp's grave in Rouen, France.

Marcel Duchamp died on 2 October 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France. His grave bears the epitaph, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent;" or "Besides, it's always other people who die."

Legacy[link]

A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th-century art:

This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

However, this was actually written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist Hans Richter, in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.^[32]

Duchamp's attitude was actually more favorable, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:

Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since [Gustave] Courbet, in favor of retinal painting.... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.^{[citation needed]}

The Prix Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the Centre Georges Pompidou. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, his Fountain was voted "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by a panel of prominent artists and art historians.

See also[link]

• Anti-art
• History of painting
• Shock art
• Found art
• Western painting
• Gustave Courbet

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Tomkins, Calvin: Duchamp: A Biography, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7
• Seigel, Jerrold: The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-20038-1
• Hulten, Pontus (editor): Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, The MIT Press, 1993. ISBN 0-262-08225-X
• Yves Arman: Marcel Duchamp plays and wins, Marcel Duchamp joue et gagne, Marval Press, 1984
• Cabanne, Pierre: Dialogs with Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press, Inc., 1979 (1969 in French), ISBN 0-306-80303-8
• Gammel, Irene. Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
• Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts For His Canning by Bonnie Jean Garner (with text boxes by Stephen Jay Gould)
• Gibson, Michael: Duchamp-Dada, (in French, Nouvelles Editions Françaises-Casterman, 1990) International Art Book Award of the Vasari Prize in 1991.
• Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. NY: Da Capo Press, 1989. ISBN 0-306-80341-0
• Sanouillet, Michel and Matisse, Paul: Marcel Duchamp : Duchamp du signe suivi de Notes, Flammarion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-08-011664-2
• Catherine Perret Marcel Duchamp, le manieur de gravité, Ed. CNDP, Paris, 1998
• Banz, Stefan (ed), Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall, JRP-Ringier, Zürich, 2010. ISBN 978-3-03764-156-9

Further reading[link]

• Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, Delano Greenidge Editions, 1995
• Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998
• Paola Magi, Caccia al tesoro con Marcel Duchamp, Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2010, ISBN 978-88-904748-0-4
• Paola Magi: Treasure Hunt With Marcel Duchamp, Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2011, ISBN 978-88-904748-7-3
• Marc Décimo: Marcel Duchamp mis à nu. A propos du processus créatif (Marcel Duchamp Stripped Bare. Apropos of the creative Act), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2004 ISBN 978-2-84066-119-1.
• Marc Décimo:The Marcel Duchamp Library, perhaps (La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2002.
• Marc Décimo, Le Duchamp facile, Les presses du réel, coll. «  L'écart absolu / Poche", Dijon, 2005
• Marc Décimo (dir.), Marcel Duchamp et l'érotisme, Les presses du réel, coll. «  L'écart absolu / Chantier », Dijon, 2008
• T.J. Demos, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.
• Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor, A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped by her Bachelor, even, Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.
• J-T. Richard, "M. Duchamp mis à nu par la psychanalyse, même" (M. Duchamp stripped bare even by psychoanalysis), éd. L'Harmattan, Paris (France), 2010.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marcel Duchamp

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp works

• Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the Arensbergs' large collection of Duchamp's work. (website)
• The Israel Museum has many of Duchamp's works in its Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art. (website)
• Marcel Duchamp at the Museum of Modern Art
• An explanation about the "Roue de bicyclette" by Duchamp (website)
• Dossier : Marcel Duchamp, Centre Pompidou
• Philadelphia Museum of Art Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) (1911).
• Philadelphia Museum of Art The Green Box. Notes and studies for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. (1915–1923)
• Rotoreliefs (1920s)
• Anémic Cinéma film (1926)

Essays by Duchamp

• Marcel Duchamp: The Creative Act (1957) Audio

General resources

• Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp Andrew Stafford: – animated explanations.
• Marcel-Duchamp.com Étant donné – annual review published by L'association pour l'etude de Marcel Duchamp.
• Toutfait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal
• MarcelDuchamp.org – Personal website dedicated to Duchamp.
• MarcelDuchamp.net – Art Science Research Laboratory site about researching Duchamp.
• Marcel Duchamp – Olga's Gallery pages with biography and images.
• Marcel Duchamp Rotoreliefs – animated.
• Marcel Duchamp (DADA Companion) – the Online Research Companion.
• Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Poraiture – online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
• profile at ChessGames.com
• Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14, a model of Duchamp's from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Essays about Duchamp

• Marcel Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other "Not" Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science Rhonda Roland Shearer:
• Duchamp is Dandy! Michael Beyer:
• "Duchamp & his legacy" Hilton Kramer:, The New Criterion
• "Peep show" Marcel Duchamp's "Étant donnés." Morgan Meis:, The Smart Set

Audio and video

• Duchamp audio CD Musical Erratum + In Conversation at LTM
• Voices of Dada, Futurism & Dada Reviewed and Surrealism Reviewed – readings by Duchamp on audio CDs
• UbuWeb – Music, lectures, and film
• Duchamp's Legacy with Richard Hamilton and Sarat Maharaj from Tate Britain. (RealPlayer required.)
• Audio of Marcel Duchamp's 'Some texts from "A l'infinitif"' (1912–20). Recorded by Aspen magazine (4:00) published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine @ Ubuweb

Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst, still from the movie The Future of Art.
Born	(1965-06-07) 7 June 1965 (age 47) Bristol, England, UK
Nationality	British
Field	Conceptual art, installation art, painting
Training	Jacob Kramer College, Leeds; Goldsmiths
Movement	Young British Artists
Works	The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, For the Love of God
Patrons	Charles Saatchi
Awards	Turner Prize

Damien Steven Hirst^[1] (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent^[2] member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s.^[3] He is internationally renowned,^[4] and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List.^[5][6] During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.^[7]

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works.^[8][9] He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,^[10] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.^[11] He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly coloured circles created by his assistants.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist^[12] by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.^[13] The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction^[14] as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.^[13]

In several instances since 1999, sources for certain of Hirst's works have been challenged and contested as plagiarised, both in written articles by journalists and artists, and, in one instance, through legal proceedings which led to an out-of-court settlement.^[15]

Hirst has made certain controversial statements to the media including, following the 11 September attacks, Hirst congratulated the attackers, stating, "You've got to hand it to them on some level." On 18 September 2002, he "apologised unreservedly" for the remarks.^[16]

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Hirst studied at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. His father was reportedly a motor mechanic, who left the family when Hirst was 12.^[17] His mother, Mary Brennan, of Irish Catholic descent, worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and has stated that she lost control of her son when he was young.^[17] He was arrested on two occasions for shoplifting.^[17] However, Hirst sees her as someone who would not tolerate rebellion: she cut up his bondage trousers and heated one of his Sex Pistols vinyl records on the cooker to turn it into a fruit bowl^[18] (or a plant pot^[19]). He says, "If she didn't like how I was dressed, she would quickly take me away from the bus stop." She did, though, encourage his liking for drawing, which was his only successful educational subject.^[18]

His art teacher "pleaded"^[18] for Hirst to be allowed to enter the sixth form,^[18] where he took two A-levels, achieving an "E" grade in art.^[17] He was refused admission to Jacob Kramer school of art when he first applied, but attended the college after a subsequent successful application to the Foundation Diploma course.^[17]

He went to an exhibition of work by Francis Davison, staged by Julian Spalding at the Hayward Gallery in 1983.^[20] Davison created abstract collages from torn and cut coloured paper which, Hirst said, "blew me away", and which he modelled his own work on for the next two years.^[20]

He worked for two years on London building sites, then studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London^[17] (1986–89), although again he was refused a place the first time he applied. In 2007, Hirst was quoted as saying of An Oak Tree by Goldsmiths' senior tutor, Michael Craig-Martin: "That piece is, I think, the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture. I still can't get it out of my head."^[21] While a student, Hirst had a placement at a mortuary, an experience that influenced his later themes and materials.

Warehouse shows[link]

In July 1988, in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of his Goldsmiths' lecturer Michael Craig-Martin. Hirst's own contribution to the show consisted of a cluster of cardboard boxes painted with household paint.^[22] After graduating, Hirst was included in New Contemporaries show and in a group show at Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.

In 1990 Hirst, along with his friend Carl Freedman and Billee Sellman, curated two enterprising "warehouse" shows, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former Peek Freans biscuit factory they designated "Building One".^[23][24] Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head.^[25] They also staged Michael Landy's Market.^[24] At this time, Hirst said, "I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say 'f off'. But after a while you can get away with things."^[20]

In 1991 his first solo exhibition, organised by Tamara Chodzko – Dial, In and Out of Love, was held in an unused shop on Woodstock Street in central London; he also had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition Broken English, in part curated by Hirst. At this time Hirst met the up-and-coming art dealer, Jay Jopling, who then represented him.

Career in contemporary art[link]

In 1991, Charles Saatchi had offered to fund whatever artwork Hirst wanted to make, and the result was showcased in 1992 in the first Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in North London. Hirst's work was titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and was a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and sold for £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000.^[26] It became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s,^[10] and the symbol of Britart worldwide.^[11] The exhibition also included A Thousand Years. As a result of the show, Hirst was nominated for that year's Turner Prize, but it was awarded to Grenville Davey.

Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale in 1993 with the work, Mother and Child Divided, a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines. He curated the show Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he exhibited Away from the Flock (a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde). On 9 May, Mark Bridger, a 35 year old artist from Oxford, walked in to the gallery and poured black ink into the tank, and retitled the work Black Sheep. He was subsequently prosecuted, at Hirst's wish, and was given two years' probation. The sculpture was restored at a cost of £1,000.

In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize. New York public health officials banned Two F***ing and Two Watching featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors". There were solo shows in Seoul, London and Salzburg. He directed the video for the song "Country House" for the band Blur. No Sense of Absolute Corruption, his first solo show in the Gagosian Gallery in New York was staged the following year. In London the short film, Hanging Around, was shown—written and directed by Hirst and starring Eddie Izzard. In 1997 the Sensation exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. A Thousand Years and other works by Hirst were included, but the main controversy occurred over other artists' works. It was nevertheless seen as the formal acceptance of the YBAs into the establishment.^[27]

In 1997, his autobiography and art book, I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, was published. With Alex James of the band Blur and actor Keith Allen, he formed the band Fat Les, achieving a number 2 hit with a raucous football-themed song Vindaloo, followed up by Jerusalem with the London Gay Men's Chorus. Hirst also painted a simple colour pattern for the Beagle 2 probe. This pattern was to be used to calibrate the probe's cameras after it had landed on Mars. He turned down the British Council's invitation to be Britain's representative at the 1999 Venice Biennale because "it didn't feel right".^[28] He sued British Airways claiming a breach of copyright over an advert design with coloured spots for its low budget airline, Go.^{[citation needed]}

2000s[link]

In 2000, Hirst's sculpture Hymn (which Saatchi had bought for a reported £1m) was given pole position at the show Ant Noises (an anagram of "sensation") in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was then sued himself for breach of copyright over this sculpture (see Appropriation below).^[29] Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first.^[30] In September 2000, in New York, Larry Gagosian held the Hirst show, Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. 100,000 people visited the show in 12 weeks and all the work was sold.

On 10 September 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, Hirst said in an interview with BBC News Online:

"The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of like an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually... You've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they kind of need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing."^[31]

The next week, following public outrage at his remarks, he issued a statement through his company, Science Ltd:

"I apologise unreservedly for any upset I have caused, particularly to the families of the victims of the events on that terrible day."^[32]

Hirst gave up smoking and drinking in 2002, although the short-term result was that his wife Maia "had to move out because I was so horrible." He had met Joe Strummer (former lead singer of The Clash) at Glastonbury in 1995, becoming good friends and going on annual family holidays with him. Just before Christmas 2002, Strummer died of a heart attack. This had a profound effect on Hirst, who said, "It was the first time I felt mortal." He subsequently devoted a lot of time to founding a charity, Strummerville, to help young musicians.^[18]

In April 2003, the Saatchi Gallery opened at new premises in County Hall, London, with a show that included a Hirst retrospective. This brought a developing strain in his relationship with Saatchi to a head^[7] (one source of contention had been who was most responsible for boosting their mutual profile). Hirst disassociated himself from the retrospective to the extent of not including it in his CV.^[7] He was angry that a Mini car that he had decorated for charity with his trademark spots was being exhibited as a serious artwork.^[7] The show also scuppered a prospective Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern.^[7] He said Saatchi was "childish"^[18] and "I'm not Charles Saatchi's barrel-organ monkey ... He only recognises art with his wallet ... he believes he can affect art values with buying power, and he still believes he can do it."^[7]

In September 2003, he had an exhibition Romance in the Age of Uncertainty at Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery in London, which made him a reported £11m,^[18] bringing his wealth to over £35m. It was reported that a sculpture, Charity, had been sold for £1.5m to a Korean, Kim Chang-Il, who intended to exhibit it in his department store's gallery in Seoul.^[33] The 22-foot (6.7m), 6-ton sculpture was based on the 1960s Spastic Society's model, which is of a girl in leg irons holding a collecting box. In Hirst's version the collecting box is shown broken open and is empty.

Charity was exhibited in the centre of Hoxton Square, in front of the White Cube. Inside the gallery downstairs were 12 vitrines representing Jesus's disciples, each case containing mostly gruesome, often blood-stained, items relevant to the particular disciple. At the end was an empty vitrine, representing Christ. Upstairs were four small glass cases, each containing a cow's head stuck with scissors and knives. It has been described as an "extraordinarily spiritual experience" in the tradition of Catholic imagery.^[34] At this time Hirst bought back 12 works from Saatchi (a third of Saatchi's holdings of Hirst's early works), through Jay Jopling, reportedly for more than £8 million. Hirst had sold these pieces to Saatchi in the early 1990s for rather less, his first installations costing under £10,000.^[7]

On 24 May 2004, a fire in the Momart storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including 17 of Hirst's, although the sculpture Charity survived, as it was outside in the builder's yard. That July, Hirst said of Saatchi, "I respect Charles. There's not really a feud. If I see him, we speak, but we were never really drinking buddies."^[18]

Hirst designed a cover for the Band Aid 20 charity single featuring the "Grim Reaper" in late 2004. The image showed an African child perched on his knee. This was not to the liking of the record company executives and was replaced by reindeer in the snow standing next to a child.

In December 2004, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen, for $12 million (£6.5 million), in a deal negotiated by Hirst's New York agent, Gagosian.^[35] Cohen, a Greenwich hedge fund manager, then donated the work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Sir Nicholas Serota had wanted to acquire it for the Tate Gallery, and Hugo Swire, Shadow Minister for the Arts, tabled a question to ask if the government would ensure it stayed in the country.^[36] Current export regulations do not apply to living artists.

Hirst exhibited 30 paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in March 2005. These had taken 3½ years to complete. They were closely based on photos, mostly by assistants (who were rotated between paintings) but with a final finish by Hirst.^[37]

In February 2006, he opened a major show in Mexico, at the Hilario Galguera Gallery, called The Death of God, Towards a Better Understanding of Life without God aboard The Ship of Fools. The exhibition attracted considerable media coverage as Hirst's first show in Latin America. In June that year, he exhibited alongside the work of Francis Bacon (Triptychs) at the Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London. Included in the exhibition was the seminal vitrine, A Thousand Years (1990), and four triptychs: paintings, medicine cabinets and a new formaldehyde work entitled The Tranquility of Solitude (For George Dyer), influenced by Bacon.

A Thousand Years, one of Hirst's most provocative and engaging works, contains an actual life cycle. Maggots hatch inside a white minimal box, turn into flies, then feed on a bloody, severed cow's head on the floor of a claustrophobic glass vitrine. Above, hatched flies buzz around in the closed space. Many meet a violent end in an insect-o-cutor; others survive to continue the cycle. A Thousand Years was admired by Bacon, who in a letter to a friend a month before he died, wrote about the experience of seeing the work at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Margarita Coppack notes that "It is as if Bacon, a painter with no direct heir in that medium, was handing the baton on to a new generation." Hirst has openly acknowledged his debt to Bacon, absorbing the painter's visceral images and obsessions early on and giving them concrete existence in sculptural form with works like A Thousand Years.^[38]

Hirst gained the auction record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist—his Lullaby Spring in June 2007, when a 3 metre-wide steel cabinet with 6,136 pills sold for 19.2 million dollars to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar.^{[citation needed]}

In June 2007, Beyond Belief, an exhibition of Hirst's new work, opened at the White Cube gallery in London. The centre-piece, a Memento Mori titled For the Love of God, was a human skull recreated in platinum and adorned with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats.^[39] Approximately £15,000,000 worth of diamonds were used. It was modelled on an 18th century skull, but the only surviving human part of the original is the teeth. The asking price for For the Love of God was £50,000,000 ($100 million or 75 million euros). It didn't sell outright,^[40] and on 30 August 2008 was sold to a consortium that included Hirst himself and his gallery White Cube.^[40]

In November 2008, the skull was exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam next to an exhibition of paintings from the museum collection selected by Hirst. Wim Pijbes, the museum director, said of the exhibition, "It boosts our image. Of course, we do the Old Masters but we are not a 'yesterday institution'. It's for now. And Damien Hirst shows this in a very strong way."^[41]

Works[link]

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever[link]

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever was a two day auction of Hirst's new work at Sotheby's, London, taking place on 15 and 16 September 2008.^[13]

It was unusual as he bypassed galleries and sold directly to the public.^[42] Writing in The Independent, Cahal Milmo said that the idea of the auction was conceived by Hirst's business advisor of 13 years, Frank Dunphy, who had to overcome Hirst's initial reluctance about the idea.^[43]

The sale raised £111 million ($198 million) for 218 items.^[14] The auction exceeded expectations,^[14] and was ten times higher than the existing Sotheby's record for a single artist sale,^[44] occurring as the financial markets plunged.^[44] The Sunday Times said that Hirst's business colleagues had "propped up"^[44] the sale prices, making purchases or bids which totalled over half of the £70.5 million spent on the first sale day:^[44] Harry Blain of the Haunch of Venison gallery said that bids were entered on behalf of clients wishing to acquire the work.^[44]

Cartrain[link]

Sculpture by Damien Hirst outside the Wallace Collection for his exhibition there in 2009

In December 2008, Hirst contacted the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) demanding action be taken over works containing images of his skull sculpture For the Love of God made by a 16 year old graffiti artist, Cartrain, and sold on the internet gallery 100artworks.com. On the advice of his gallery, Cartrain handed over the artworks to DACS and forfeited the £200 he had made; he said, "I met Christian Zimmermann [from DACS] who told me Hirst personally ordered action on the matter."^[45] In June 2009, copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry compared the two images and said, "This is fairly non-contentious legally. Ask yourself, what portion of the original–and not just the quantity but also the quality–appears in the new work? If a 'substantial portion' of the 'original' appears in the new work, then that's all you need for copyright infringement... Quantitatively about 80% of the skull is in the second image."^[46]

Cartrain walked into Tate Britain in July 2009 and removed a pack of "very rare Faber Castell 1990 Mongol 482 series pencils" from Damien Hirst's pharmacy installation. Cartrain had then made a "fake" police appeal poster stating that the pencils had been "stolen" and that if anyone had any information they should call the police on the phone number advertised. Cartrain was arrested for £500,000 worth of theft.^[47]

Painting[link]

In October 2009, Hirst revealed that he had been painting with his own hand in a style influenced by Francis Bacon for several years. No Love Lost, his show of these paintings at the Wallace Collection in London received "one of the most unanimously negative responses to any exhibition in living memory".^[48] Tom Lubbock of The Independent called Hirst's work derivative, weak and boring:^[49] "Hirst, as a painter, is at about the level of a not-very-promising, first-year art student."^[49] Rachel Campbell-Johnston of The Times said it was "shockingly bad".^[49] A 2012 exhibition of paintings by Hirst at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, entitled "Two Weeks One Summer", provoked in The Guardian the comment that Hirst "can kid himself he is an Old Master and have the art world go along with the fantasy".^[50]

Work philosophy[link]

Although Hirst participated physically in the making of early works, he has always needed assistants (Carl Freedman helped with the first vitrines), and now the volume of work produced necessitates a "factory" setup, akin to Andy Warhol's or a Renaissance studio. This has led to questions about authenticity, as was highlighted in 1997, when a spin painting that Hirst said was a "forgery" appeared at sale, although he had previously said that he often had nothing to do with the creation of these pieces.

Rachel Howard painted Hirst's "best spot paintings".^[51] Photographed by Ross McNicol

Hirst said that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite"—"They're shit compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, "'make one of your own.' And she said, 'No, I want one of yours.' But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.'"^[51] By February 1999, two assistants had painted 300 spot paintings. Hirst sees the real creative act as being the conception, not the execution, and that, as the progenitor of the idea, he is therefore the artist:

"Art goes on in your head," he says. "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. It's your response to your surroundings. There are on-going ideas I've been working out for years, like how to make a rainbow in a gallery. I've always got a massive list of titles, of ideas for shows, and of works without titles."^[18]

Hirst is also known to volunteer repair work on his projects after a client has made a purchase. For example, this service was offered in the case of the suspended shark purchased by Steven A. Cohen.^[52][53][54]

Appropriation and plagiarism claims[link]

In 1999, chef Marco Pierre White said Hirst's Butterflies On Mars had plagiarised his own work, Rising Sun, which he then put on display in the restaurant Quo Vadis in place of the Hirst work.^[55]

In 2000, Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over his sculpture, Hymn, which was a 20-foot (6.1 m), six ton, enlargement of his son Connor's 14" Young Scientist Anatomy Set, designed by Norman Emms, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull-based toy manufacturer Humbrol for £14.99 each.^[29] Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities, Children Nationwide and the Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement,^[29] as well as a "good will payment" to Emms.^[55] The charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst also agreed to restrictions on further reproductions of his sculpture.^[29]

In 2006, a graphic artist and former research associate at the Royal College of Art, Robert Dixon, author of 'Mathographics', alleged that Hirst's print Valium had "unmistakable similarities" to one of his own designs. Hirst's manager contested this by explaining the origin of Hirst's piece was from a book The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry (1991)—not realising this was one place where Dixon's design had been published.^[55][56]

In 2007, artist John LeKay said he was a friend of Damien Hirst between 1992 and 1994 and had given him a "marked-up duplicate copy" of a Carolina Biological Supply Company catalogue, adding "You have no idea how much he got from this catalogue. The Cow Divided is on page 647 – it is a model of a cow divided down the centre, like his piece." This refers to Hirst’s work Mother and Child, Divided—a cow and calf cut in half and placed in formaldehyde.^[56] LeKay also claimed Hirst had copied the idea of For the Love of God from LeKay's crystal skulls made in 1993, and said, "I would like Damien to acknowledge that 'John really did inspire the skull and influenced my work a lot.'"^[56] Copyright lawyer Paul Tackaberry reviewed images of LeKay's and Hirst's work and saw no basis for copyright infringement claims in a legal sense.^[46]

In 2010, in The Jackdaw, Charles Thomson said there were 15 cases where Hirst had plagiarised other work.^[57] Examples cited were Joseph Cornell who had created a similar piece to Hirst's Pharmacy in 1943; Lori Precious who had made stained-glass window effects from butterfly wings from 1994, a number of years before Hirst; and John LeKay who did a crucified sheep in 1987.^[57] Thomson said that Hirst's spin paintings and installation of a ball on a jet of air were not original, since similar pieces had been made in the 1960s.^[57][58] A spokesperson for Hirst said the article was "poor journalism" and that Hirst would be making a "comprehensive" rebuttal of the claims.^[59]

Hirst's own collection[link]

In November 2006, Hirst was curator of In the darkest hour there may be light, shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the first public exhibition of (a small part of) his own collection.^[60] Now known as the ‘murderme collection’, this significant accumulation of works spans several generations of international artists, from well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol, to artists in earlier stages of their careers such as his former assistant Rachel Howard,^[61] David Choe, Nicholas Lumb, Tom Ormond and Dan Baldwin.^[62]

“As a human being, as you go through life, you just do collect. It was that sort of entropic collecting that I found myself interested in, just amassing stuff while you’re alive.” – Damien Hirst, 2006.^[63]

Hirst is currently restoring the Grade I listed Toddington Manor, near Cheltenham, where he intends to eventually house the complete collection.^[64]

In 2007, Hirst donated the 1991 sculptures "The Acquired Inability to Escape" and "Life Without You" and the 2002 work "Who is Afraid of the Dark?" (fly painting), and an exhibition copy from 2007 of "Mother and Child Divided" to the Tate Museum from his own personal collection of works.^[65]

In March 2012 Hirst outlined plans to open a gallery in Vauxhall, London specifically designed to exhibit his personal collection, which includes five pieces by Francis Bacon. The date of opening is provisionally set for 2014.^[66]

Restaurant ventures[link]

Hirst had a short-lived partnership with chef Marco Pierre White in the restaurant "Quo Vadis". His best-known restaurant involvement was Pharmacy, located in Notting Hill, London, which closed in September 2003. Although one of the owners, Hirst had only leased his art work to the restaurant, so he was able to retrieve and sell it at a Sotheby's auction, earning over £11 million. Some of the work had been adapted, e.g. by signing it prior to the auction.^[67]

Hirst opened and currently helps to run a seafood restaurant, 11 The Quay, in the seaside town of Ilfracombe in the UK.

9/11 controversy[link]

Following the 11 September attacks, Hirst told BBC News Online: "You've got to hand it to them on some level, because they've achieved something which nobody would have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing." On 18 September 2002, he apologised "unreservedly" for the remarks.^[16]

Charitable work[link]

Hirst is a supporter of the indigenous rights organisation, Survival International.^[68] On September 2008, Hirst donated the work, Beautiful Love Survival, at the Sotheby’s London sale, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, to raise money for this organisation.^[69][70] Later, he also contributed his writing to the book, We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009, in support of Survival. The book explores the existence and threats of indigenous cultures around the world.^[71][72]

Personal life[link]

Hirst lives with his Californian girlfriend, Maia Norman, by whom he has three sons: Connor Ojala, (born 1995, Kensington and Chelsea, London), Cassius Atticus (born 2000, North Devon) and Cyrus Joe (born 2005, Westminster, London).^[73] Since the birth of Connor, he has spent most of his time at his remote farmhouse, a 300-year-old former inn, near Combe Martin, Devon. Hirst and Norman are not married,^{[citation needed]}, although Hirst refers to Norman as his "common-law wife".^[74] The artist owns a large compound in Baja, Mexico, which serves as a part-time residence and art studio. The studio employs several artists who carry out Hirst's projects.

Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990s: "I started taking cocaine and drink... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck."^[51] During this time he was renowned for his wild behaviour and eccentric acts, including for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists.^[75] He frequented the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behaviour.

Net worth[link]

Hirst is reputed to be the richest living artist to date.^[6] In 2009, the annually collated chart of the wealthiest individuals in Britain and Ireland, Sunday Times Rich List, placed Hirst at joint number 238 with a net worth of £235m.^[76] Hirst's wealth was valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, hence Damien Hirst is Britain’s wealthiest artist.^[5]

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist^[12] by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and by-passing his long-standing galleries.^[13] The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million ($198 million), breaking the record for a one-artist auction^[14] as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.^[13]

In several instances since 1999, the sources for certain of Hirst's works have been challenged and contested, both in written articles by journalists and artists, and, in one instance, through legal proceedings which led to an out-of-court settlement.^[15]

Critical responses to conceptual work[link]

Positive[link]

Tracey Emin said Hirst is in a league of his own, comparable to Andy Warhol.^[77]

Hirst has been praised in recognition of his celebrity and the way this has galvanised interest in the arts, raising the profile of British art and helping to (re)create the image of "Cool Britannia." In the mid-1990s, the then-Heritage Secretary, Virginia Bottomley recognised him as "a pioneer of the British art movement", and even sheep farmers were pleased he had raised increased interest in British lamb.^[78] Janet Street-Porter praised his originality, which had brought art to new audiences and was the "art-world equivalent of the Oasis concerts at Earl's Court".^[78]

Andres Serrano is also known for shocking work and understands that contemporary fame does not necessarily equate to lasting fame, but backs Hirst: "Damien is very clever ... First you get the attention ... Whether or not it will stand the test of time, I don't know, but I think it will."^[78] Sir Nicholas Serota commented, "Damien is something of a showman ... It is very difficult to be an artist when there is huge public and media attention. Because Damien Hirst has been built up as a very important figure, there are plenty of sceptics ready to put the knife in."^[78]

Tracey Emin said: "There is no comparison between him and me; he developed a whole new way of making art and he's clearly in a league of his own. It would be like making comparisons with Warhol."^[77] Despite Hirst's insults to him, Saatchi remains a staunch supporter, labelling Hirst a genius^[78] and stating:

General art books dated 2105 will be as brutal about editing the late 20th century as they are about almost all other centuries. Every artist other than Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd and Damien Hirst will be a footnote.^[79]

Negative[link]

There has been equally vehement opposition to Hirst's work. Norman Tebbit, commenting on the Sensation exhibition, wrote "Have they gone stark raving mad? The works of the 'artist' are lumps of dead animals. There are thousands of young artists who didn't get a look in, presumably because their work was too attractive to sane people. Modern art experts never learn."^[80] The view of the tabloid press was summed up by a Daily Mail headline: "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all." The Evening Standard art critic, Brian Sewell, said simply, "I don't think of it as art ... It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. Indeed there may well be more art in a stuffed pike than a dead sheep."^[80]

The Stuckist art group was founded in 1999 with a specific anti-Britart agenda by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish;^[81] Hirst is one of their main targets. They wrote (referring to a Channel 4 programme on Hirst):

The fact that Hirst's work does mirror society is not its strength but its weakness – and the reason it is guaranteed to decline artistically (and financially) as current social modes become outmoded. What Hirst has insightfully observed of his spin-paintings in Life and Death and Damien Hirst is the only comment that needs to be made of his entire oeuvre: "They're bright and they're zany – but there's fuck all there at the end of the day."^[80]

A Dead Shark Isn't Art, Stuckism International Gallery 2003^[82]

In 2003, under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art, the Stuckism International Gallery exhibited a shark which had first been put on public display two years before Hirst's by Eddie Saunders in his Shoreditch shop, JD Electrical Supplies. Thomson asked, "If Hirst’s shark is recognised as great art, then how come Eddie’s, which was on exhibition for two years beforehand, isn’t? Do we perhaps have here an undiscovered artist of genius, who got there first, or is it that a dead shark isn’t art at all?"^[82] The Stuckists suggested that Hirst may have got the idea for his work from Saunders' shop display.^[83]

In a 2008 Channel 4 documentary called The Mona Lisa Curse, art critic Robert Hughes claimed that Hirst's work was "tacky" and "absurd". Hughes said it was "a little miracle" that the value of £5 million was put on Hirst's Virgin Mother (a 35 foot bronze statue), which was made by someone "with so little facility".^[84] Hughes called Hirst's shark in formaldehyde "the world's most over-rated marine organism" and attacked the artist for "functioning like a commercial brand", making the case that Hirst and his work proved that financial value was now the only meaning that remained for art.^[84]

Julian Spalding, British art critic and author of the book Con Art - Why You Should Sell Your Damien Hirsts While You Can,^[85] has said "It's often been proposed, seriously, that Damien Hirst is a greater artist than Michelangelo because he had the idea for a shark in a tank whereas Michelangelo didn't have the idea for his David," and "The emperor has nothing on. When the penny drops that these are not art, it's all going to collapse. Hirst should not be in the Tate. He's not an artist. What separates Michelangelo from Hirst is that Michelangelo was an artist and Hirst isn't."^[86][87]

Stefanie Schneider said on the Gerd Scobel documentary shown on 3sat called "Money or Life" in Dec 2011 that "He may be a designer, but certainly no artist."

Artworks[link]

His works include:

• In and Out of Love (1991), an installation of potted plants, caterpillars and monochrome canvases painted with sugar solution and glue. There were also (in a separate room) tables with ashtrays containing used cigarette butts. Eventually, the caterpillars metamorphose into butterflies, and the insects become fixed to the surfaces of the canvases. In its now fixed form, the work is held by the Yale Center for British Art and is on regular exhibit there.
• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde. This piece was one of the works in his Turner Prize nomination show.
• A Thousand Years (1991), composed of a vitrine with a glass division. In one half is the severed head of a cow on the floor; in the other is an insect electrocutor. Maggots introduced into the vitrine feed off the cow and then develop into flies that are killed by the electrocutor.
• Pharmacy (1992), a life-size recreation of a chemist's shop.
• Amonium Biborate (1993)
• Away from the Flock (1994), composed of a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde.
• Arachidic Acid (1994) an early example of Hirst's spot paintings.
• Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything (1996) multiple cows in a line head-to-tail, divided cross-sectionally into equal rectangular tanks of formaldehyde, equally-spaced, each containing about 3 feet (0.91 m) of the animals.
• Beautiful Axe , Slash, Gosh Painting (1999) Signed on the reverse. Gloss household paint on canvas
• Hymn (1999), a scaled-up replica of his son Connor's toy: a basic anatomical model of the male human body. The sculpture is 20 ft (6.1 m) tall and composed of painted bronze.
• Mother and Child Divided, composed of a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde.
• Two Fucking and Two Watching, includes a rotting cow and bull. This work was banned from exhibition in New York by public health officials.
• God, composed of a cabinet containing pharmaceutical products.
• The Virgin Mother, a massive sculpture depicting a pregnant female human, with layers removed from one side to expose the fœtus, muscle and tissue layers, and skull underneath. This work was purchased by real estate magnate Aby Rosen for display on the plaza of one of his properties, the Lever House, in New York City.
• Breath (2001), a 45-second film of Samuel Beckett's play for the Beckett on Film series.
• Painting-By-Numbers (2001), a do-it-yourself painting kit comprising a stamped canvas, brushes, and 90 paint tins in plexiglass designed to make one infamous 'dot' painting. Part of the exhibition was binned by a gallery cleaner who mistook it for trash.^[88]
• The Stations of the Cross (2004), a series of twelve photographs depicting the final moments of Jesus Christ, made in collaboration with the photographer David Bailey.
• The Wrath of God (2005), a new version of a shark in formaldehyde.
• The Inescapable Truth, (2005). Glass, steel, dove, human skull and formaldehyde solution.
• The Sacred Heart of Jesus, (2005). Perspex, bull's heart, silver, assorted needles, scalpels, and formaldehyde solution.
• Faithless, (2005). Butterflies and household gloss on canvas
• The Hat Makes de Man, (2005). Painted bronze that simulates wood and hats.
• The Death of God, (2006). Household gloss on canvas, human skull, knife, coin and sea shells. This painting, which is a part of a group of others which were made in Mexico, are believed to be "the beginning of Hirst's Mexican period".
• For The Love of God, a platinum cast of an 18th century skull covered in 8,601 diamonds.^[89]
• Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain, a black calf tied to a pole pierced with arrows. The calf is in a tank of formaldehyde. Performer George Michael has recently purchased this calf and has made it Hirst's fourth most expensive piece.
• Beautiful Inside my Head Forever (2008), Hirst's auction of new work at Sotheby's.
• CleanEquity award 2008 and 2009
• Temple (2008), a massive painted bronze sculpture of a man, with similar treatment to "Virgin Mother", above, reminiscent of models used by anatomy students, with revealed organs and internal structure. This work was exhibited outside the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco in 2010, during a summer retrospective of the artist's work.

See also[link]

• Appropriation (art)
• Neo-conceptual art
• Conceptual art
• Spin art

References[link]