The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living

Damien Hirst

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

1991

Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution

2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in

Sculpture

Formaldehyde

Image: Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012

Why is so much of Hirst’s work about death? “It’s every artist’s main theme,” he says. “There isn’t really anything else. It just depends how far you stand back from it. Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it’s such a big thing that you can’t.

“That’s the frightening thing, isn’t it? It’s like everything you do in life is pointless if you just take a step back and look at it.”

Yet Hirst doesn’t think that art about death has to be morbid. “The difference between art about death and actual death is that one’s a celebration and the other’s a dull fact. For instance, if you get Morrissey singing a song about a girlfriend leaving him, everybody will buy the record; whereas if you get a guy at a party talking about his girlfriend leaving him, nobody wants to talk to him.

“That’s the difference between art and life. You can frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or it can actually give them vigour, and they can go away and appreciate their lives more. I’m going to teach my children how to find the good things in life without being afraid of the finality of it.”

source