Perhaps we should have pity for Damien Hirst. Artistic decline is a terrible fate, even if you have immense wealth to cushion the blow. What artist, what person, wants to think all the good stuff is in the past? But Hirst apparently does think that. He could hardly confess it more clearly than by pre-dating formaldehyde animal sculptures made in 2017 to the 1990s, as whistleblowers have revealed to the Guardian.
The young Damien Hirst lived fast and thought constantly about death. At 16 he posed for a photo with a severed head in a Leeds morgue. As an emerging artist he came up with a totally new spin on the ancient theme of the memento mori by putting dead animals, including a four-metre-long tiger shark, in tanks of formaldehyde and exhibiting them as art. Dry, dusty disputes over whether readymade objects can be art paled into irrelevance before Hirst's reminders of our fleshy fragility - and for a generation that had grown up with Jaws it was a nightmare come to life.
It was Hirst that came into my mind, not Rembrandt, as I paced the hospital where my mum was having heart surgery in the 1990s. I have told Hirst that. I also truthfully told him that he helped inspire me to become an art critic. That shark changed my life.
Denne historien er fra March 29, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra March 29, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.
