Damien Hirst
After the lecture on Sarah Lucas, the mention of Damien Hirst made me want to look into him a little more. I have previously seen his famous 'shark' piece and didn’t give it much thought, but hearing about his interest in 'death in all its forms' makes me wonder why and what he thinks all its forms are....
I looked into his pieces that consist of animals being encased into gel and boxes. When I first look at these, I don’t understand why this would be called art or why people would like to look at frozen dead animals, its not unit I saw his sheep piece that I started to find this work interesting. Although not nice to look at he splits this animal in half, so one side is the outside of the sheep and the other is the inside of the sheep. I think it shows the realistic look to death and show the different side to the animal itself.
I wanted to look more into how Damien Hirst interprets death in a less obvious way, so I found this work 'for the love of god'. Diamond incrusted skull. I’m not aware of what this is representing however it’s not something I wanted to look into because I first wanted to see what my interpretation was of it. I think that the piece is a contradiction, it tries to make death seem beautiful ad glamorous, for what reasons I’m not sure but placing diamonds and human skull in one piece could be controversial and many people may take a dislike to it. Myself I don’t think its aesthetically appealing, it’s actually quite dark despite the reflective surface. However I think the contradiction and idea behind it is an interesting one. I also think other interpretations could be the interesting thing about this piece, it seems like an open work like those of Umberto Eco talks about. Its never quite closed because of the many interpretations that can be taken.
Although I find his work interesting I don’t like it to look at, however I did find a piece by him that I took a liking to, the pieces of mickey. He started to make simple ‘Mickey Mouse’ using just circles, and I think this actually looks quite creative. I like simplistic design and I want to try making some characters of my own using this idea. He then places different coloured dots all over a room. I think this shows that people and things are made up of a series of set aspects that we all have. I think its depicts the simplicity of life and how we live. it seems strange that something as small as a Mickey mouse image can depict this type of message.
