The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

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The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
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The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living ( German  Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living ) is a work of art by British artist Damien Hirst in 1991: In a display case there is a in formaldehyde preserved tiger shark with a wide open Mouth. The work was commissioned by art dealer Charles Saatchi , who sold it to Steven A. Cohen in2004 for £ 6.5 million (EUR 9.3 million). In 2006, the shark had to be replaced after its body began to disintegrate. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is considered an icon of art of the 1990s and is one of the works that established Damien Hirst's fame. As a result of the exchange of the shark preparation, a discussion broke out about the value of this work of art and its duration. From 2007 to 2010 the artwork was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City .

description

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is a 213.4 centimeter high and wide and 640.1 centimeter long display case , which is divided by white steel frames. It contains a five percent solution of formaldehyde that preserves a tiger shark . The original shark was 14 feet long, and the shark incorporated into the artwork as a replacement in 2006 is 13 feet long. The shark is shown in a lifelike position with its mouth wide open. The work of art takes up the way of presenting animal preparations in natural history museums , but places them in a different context. So large wet specimens are not common and do not have the lifelike position. The display in the showcase, which is strongly emphasized by the steel frame, is not common with the dominance of the container and should be interpreted in this work as a statement on the organizing and contouring function of the showcases. With this work, Hirst also questions the scientific use of such animal preparations for researching life. He said: “This fucked up way to look at something and it's already dead by the time when you look at it and you try to understand what was it like when it lived. That kind of contradictions, in a way like relationships, how people destroy each other. It's a kind of what's wrong with scientific approach or something. ”(Eng. “ That shitty way of looking at something and by the time you look at it, it's already dead and you're trying to understand what it was like when it was alive . That kind of contradiction, kind of like relationships, how people destroy each other. It's kind of what's wrong with the scientific approach or something. " ).

Creation and revision

The British art collector Charles Saatchi commissioned a work of art worth 50,000 pounds from Damien Hirst in 1991, the content of which the artist could determine himself. He gave the Australian shark hunter Vic Hislop the order for $ 6,000 to catch a shark. Hirst gave the reason for this choice that he wanted to prepare an animal that would have been terrifying in reality. The animal was prepared with needles that brought the formaldehyde into the body, but this was not done well enough, so that after a while the body of the shark became visible and the liquid became cloudy, which prompted employees of the Saatchi Gallery to add bleach to give the tank. After Steven A. Cohen acquired The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living in 2004, Hirst offered to exchange the decaying shark, which Cohen financed. The artist then again commissioned an Australian fisherman to catch a tiger shark. This replacement took place in 2006 in an old hangar of the Royal Air Force in Gloucestershire . Instead of the 14 foot long shark, five Hirst employees placed a one foot shorter replacement in the pool.

Position in Damien Hirst's work

Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding
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With The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living Damien Hirst opened his Natural History series, in which the work occupies a prominent position as it is probably the largest and most spectacular preparation by Hirst. The tiger shark was followed by other animal preparations in formaldehyde, all of which stand as individual works, but can also be classified in this series. In the same year as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living , Hirst produced the work Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding , in which 38 fish preserved in plexiglass boxes are layered in a laboratory cupboard. With the same orientation of the fish and their lifelike preparation, this work is a parody of a school of fish by Damien Hirst. Other preparations followed, including a cow and a sheep . Overall, with the Natural History series, Hirst questions what kind of knowledge such scientific objects can actually bring to science.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is considered one of Damien Hirst's most important works. It is also considered an icon of British art in the 1990s.

reception

A Dead Shark Isn't Art , 2003. Stuckism International Gallery

When the price for the work, which was considered to be relatively high, became known, the British newspaper The Sun referred to it as “£ 50,000 for fish without chips”. The artwork continued to serve as a hook for further discussions about the value of art. In a 2004 speech at the Royal Academy of Arts , Robert Hughes took Hirst's shark as an example of the profanity of the art market , even if he did not explicitly name the title. In 2003, a shark was exhibited in the Stuckism International Gallery under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art , which was on view in a shop window two years before Hirst's work. The background was the question of whether, if Hirst's groomed shark is a work of art, this older shark should not also be a work of art.

In 2005, the British artist duo The Little Artists showed a Lego installation under the title Art Craziest Nation at the Walker Art Gallery , which recreated an exhibition of popular works of art. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living can also be seen as “Hirst's Shark Tank” . Also in 2005, the Czech artist David Černý produced the work Shark , in which a lifelike replica of Saddam Hussein swims instead of the tiger shark in an installation reminiscent of Hirst's work . Černý's work was shown at the Prague Biennale in the year it was made.

Provenance

Charles Saatchi commissioned Damien Hirst for The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living for £ 50,000. After receiving the work, Saatchi showed it for a few months in his gallery on Boundary Road . Then it was only presented again in the highly regarded exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy of Arts . In 2004, Saatchi sold The Impossible of Death in the Mind of Someone Living for £ 6.5 million to American collector Steven A. Cohen. He had the decaying shark replaced by Hirst and made the work of art available on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2007 to 2010 . There it was exhibited on the second floor in a room with south-facing windows and featuring three shark paintings, an anonymous copy of John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark from the late 18th century, Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer from 1899 and Francis Bacon's Head I from 1947, placed in a broader art context.

literature

  • Don Thompson: The $ 12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art . Doubleday Canada, Toronto 2009, ISBN 978-0-385-66678-7 .
  • Norman Rosenthal, Brooks Adams: Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection . Thames & Hudson, London 1997, ISBN 0-500-28042-8 .
  • Silke Hohmann, Oliver Koerner von Gustorf: Stations: 100 masterpieces of contemporary art . DuMont, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8321-9059-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Unfresh fish. on: FAZ.net. June 29, 2006.
  2. a b c d Carol Vogel: Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks. In: The New York Times. October 1, 2006.
  3. ^ A b c Viktor Kittlausz: Art Museum Contexts: Perspectives on Art and Culture Mediation . transcript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-582-0 , p. 143.
  4. a b Viktor Kittlausz: Art Museum Contexts: Perspectives on Art and Culture Mediation . transcript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-582-0 , p. 144.
  5. The great white art hunter , Kerrie Davies, the Oz , April 14, 2012
  6. a b Lynn Barber: Bleeding art. In: The Observer. April 20, 2003.
  7. ^ Nigel Warburton: The art question . Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 0-415-17489-9 .
  8. Maev Kennedy: Art market a 'cultural obscenity'. In: The Guardian. June 3, 2004.
  9. Dalya Alberge: Traditionalists mark shark attack on Hirst. In: Times online. April 10, 2003.
  10. ^ “Hirst's Shark Tank” ( memento from February 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on the Walker Art Gallery website
  11. “How Saddam was set up” , in: Spiegel Online from June 6, 2005
  12. ^ Roberta Smith: Just When You Thought It Was Safe. In: The New York Times. October 16, 2007.