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Lot Essay
“What Hirst presents is a radical new form of realism”—Rudi Fuchs
Rudi Fuchs (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 22).
Damien Hirst’s Matthew (The Twelve Disciples) belongs to a body of work that radically transformed our understanding of art. In presenting a flayed bull’s head housed in a glass vitrine filled with formaldehyde solution, Hirst has dispensed with centuries of tradition in his quest for a new form of artistic language. As the Dutch art historian Rudi Fuchs noted, “What Hirst presents is a radical new form of realism. It is no longer illusionistic (as in realist painting), nor suggestive (as in collage, or the Surrealist tradition the object trouvé), but hard and utterly concrete and therefore, in its visual impact, startingly powerful” (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 22).
Part of Hirst’s Natural History series, the present work is one of twelve sculptures the artist made in 1994 reinterpreting the biblical story of the Last Supper. Like the present example, each work comprises a bull’s head visible in a glass case. Unlike traditional sculpture however, the work is placed on the floor, allowing it to be seen from all directions, including from above. Named after one of the apostles, each is made using a white edged tank, except for that of Judas Iscariot, which is encased in black to denote his role as the apostle who betrayed Jesus. One example, Philip (The Twelve Disciples), is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Symbolic relief came with a thirteenth tank, dedicated to the Ascension of Jesus. In this final work, the cow's head has disappeared, leaving only the surreal and serene clear tank of formaldehyde – a suspension of Hirst’s great philosophical dilemma between life and death.
The present work is part of Hirst's longtime fascination with religion and religious iconography. Even though he described himself as an atheist, the artist appreciates the power of religious imagery and its continued influence over many people’s lives. “They are great stories...” he has said, “it is about the ends of those guys. Cut just like a group of people who all meet these terrible ends. But I think you can use something like that. Everyone is a martyr really in life. So, I think you can use that as an example of your own life, just that kind of involvement with the world. Just trying to find out what your life actually amounts to, in the end” (D. Hirst interview with M. D'Argenzi and A. Bonito Oliva (ed.), Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 223).
In this, Hirst evokes the work of one of his artistic heroes, the British painter Francis Bacon “I remember being shocked that the illusion of a painting is a two-dimensional thing, so it can become a three-dimensional thing, and it’s like a ghost and it’s alive, and it’s dead. But I just love all the things it raises, and it kind of pulls you in, in some way. You can’t look at it, and you can’t not. I think Bacon is on his own, really. I mean, he had a very, very dark view of the world” (D. Hirst, quoted in “Damien Hirst on Francis Bacon,” Tate, London, online [accessed: 4/11/2025]).
Hirst’s first ‘formaldehyde’ work was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, created in 1991. The 14-foot Tiger Shark floating in a glass tank, was first exhibited the following year at an exhibition of work by the YBAs (Young British Artists) at Charles Saatchi’s eponymous gallery. It quickly garnered a reputation as one of the most recognizable examples of contemporary art, a seminal work that established a new form of presentation allowing artists to give physical form to the complex thoughts in their head.
With works such as Matthew (The Twelve Disciples), Hirst tackles head-on some of the most fundamental questions about human existence. But rather than letting them remain purely philosophical questions, in Hirt’s hands they become tangible forms, and as Fuchs concludes, in Hirst’s work “thoughts about life and death that may have been abstruse…but become clear when they found a concrete form…that made them complete and finished” (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 21).
Rudi Fuchs (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 22).
Damien Hirst’s Matthew (The Twelve Disciples) belongs to a body of work that radically transformed our understanding of art. In presenting a flayed bull’s head housed in a glass vitrine filled with formaldehyde solution, Hirst has dispensed with centuries of tradition in his quest for a new form of artistic language. As the Dutch art historian Rudi Fuchs noted, “What Hirst presents is a radical new form of realism. It is no longer illusionistic (as in realist painting), nor suggestive (as in collage, or the Surrealist tradition the object trouvé), but hard and utterly concrete and therefore, in its visual impact, startingly powerful” (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 22).
Part of Hirst’s Natural History series, the present work is one of twelve sculptures the artist made in 1994 reinterpreting the biblical story of the Last Supper. Like the present example, each work comprises a bull’s head visible in a glass case. Unlike traditional sculpture however, the work is placed on the floor, allowing it to be seen from all directions, including from above. Named after one of the apostles, each is made using a white edged tank, except for that of Judas Iscariot, which is encased in black to denote his role as the apostle who betrayed Jesus. One example, Philip (The Twelve Disciples), is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Symbolic relief came with a thirteenth tank, dedicated to the Ascension of Jesus. In this final work, the cow's head has disappeared, leaving only the surreal and serene clear tank of formaldehyde – a suspension of Hirst’s great philosophical dilemma between life and death.
The present work is part of Hirst's longtime fascination with religion and religious iconography. Even though he described himself as an atheist, the artist appreciates the power of religious imagery and its continued influence over many people’s lives. “They are great stories...” he has said, “it is about the ends of those guys. Cut just like a group of people who all meet these terrible ends. But I think you can use something like that. Everyone is a martyr really in life. So, I think you can use that as an example of your own life, just that kind of involvement with the world. Just trying to find out what your life actually amounts to, in the end” (D. Hirst interview with M. D'Argenzi and A. Bonito Oliva (ed.), Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 223).
In this, Hirst evokes the work of one of his artistic heroes, the British painter Francis Bacon “I remember being shocked that the illusion of a painting is a two-dimensional thing, so it can become a three-dimensional thing, and it’s like a ghost and it’s alive, and it’s dead. But I just love all the things it raises, and it kind of pulls you in, in some way. You can’t look at it, and you can’t not. I think Bacon is on his own, really. I mean, he had a very, very dark view of the world” (D. Hirst, quoted in “Damien Hirst on Francis Bacon,” Tate, London, online [accessed: 4/11/2025]).
Hirst’s first ‘formaldehyde’ work was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, created in 1991. The 14-foot Tiger Shark floating in a glass tank, was first exhibited the following year at an exhibition of work by the YBAs (Young British Artists) at Charles Saatchi’s eponymous gallery. It quickly garnered a reputation as one of the most recognizable examples of contemporary art, a seminal work that established a new form of presentation allowing artists to give physical form to the complex thoughts in their head.
With works such as Matthew (The Twelve Disciples), Hirst tackles head-on some of the most fundamental questions about human existence. But rather than letting them remain purely philosophical questions, in Hirt’s hands they become tangible forms, and as Fuchs concludes, in Hirst’s work “thoughts about life and death that may have been abstruse…but become clear when they found a concrete form…that made them complete and finished” (R. Fuchs, “Minimal Baroque & Hymns,” in Damien Hirst Cornucopia, exh. cat., Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010, p. 21).