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Lot Essay
Take the example of the corpse: it can be dissected and treated as an object of science only to the extent that it passes--even if this scandalizes the devout or superstitious--from the domain of the sacred to that of the profane. -Georges Bataille
Damien Hirst is among the most notorious of a bold generation of British artists who emerged in the late eighties and early nineties and caused an international scandal in 1997 with a show entitled "Sensation" at the Royal Academy, London. Drawing on movements such as Pop and Minimalism in provocative ways, Hirst challenges us to look at the wonders and horrors of the world in which we live. His work examines the interstices between life and death, human and animal, science and art. Blurring traditional boundaries and exploding their limits, Hirst's art is sensational in the true meaning of the word.
From a distance and at first glance, Yes, but how do you really feel, 1996 could easily be confused with a natural history exhibit or Halloween extravaganza. As one gets closer to it and looks deeper, however, the artistic qualities of this piece emerge, and we see the skeletons as beautiful, fascinating structures--human sculpture. We are thus presented with a skeletal serial. The evacuated bodies are individually packaged in vitrines where the use of transparent and mirrored glass may bring to mind the work of Dan Graham, Jeff Koons or Donald Judd. As in Hirst's other works, the vitrines are crucial here for the way in which they encase, monumentalize, and aestheticize the skeletons they contain.
Yes, but how do you really feel, concerns the body of decay--it's function and composition--inside and out. The traditional modes of distinction between man and animal are complicated in this work for here is a body without a being. In the absence of the spirit and the intellect, man is different from animal only in form. The display case--an appropriation of the Minimalist box--becomes man's cage. The skeletons hang in a captivity of their creation, an idea which is visually heightened by the repetition of bodies which are at once alien and intimate to us. As viewers, we are separated from the objects by the formal vitrine and yet we cannot help but imagine ourselves inside them somehow. The skeleton is what is inside all of us and all that will be left after we die. One can only wonder why the artist chose six skeletons. Is six the right amount to mimic Warholian repetition and seriality? Or perhaps a distant Catholic reference to the six holy days of obligation? Or, in Hirst's aesthetic judgement, the number that it takes to make it feel ominous.
But if man's destiny is really this dismal, why are the skeletons all smiling? Morbid though it may be, there is an essential if dark humor that runs through all of Hirst's work, and the smile acts on many levels in this work. For one, it evokes an earlier photo-sculpture piece by the artist entitled With Dead Head, 1991 in which Hirst is captured posing with his arm around, and his face propped up against, the severed head of a corpse. Hirst recalls the inspiration behind With Dead Head: "I'm sixteen. It's ten years old. If you look at my face, I'm actually going: 'Quick. Quick. Take the photo.' It's worry. I wanted to show my friends, but I couldn't take my friends there, to the morgue in Leeds. I'm absolutely terrified. I'm grinning, but I'm expecting the eyes to open and for it to go: Grrrrraaaaagh!' To me, the smile and everything seemed to sum up this problem between life and death. It was such a ridiculous way of, like, being at the point of trying to come to terms with it, especially being sixteen and everything: this is life and this is death. And I'm trying to work it out" (Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn in On the Way to Work, New York: Universe, 2001, p. 34).
From this statement, we see the human in the artist--he too is capable of fear and disgust in the literal face of death. He recognizes limits and taboos, but transgresses them anyway. With Dead Head thus introduces the smile as an indexical mark of the human character in the artist's work. In Yes, but how do you really feel, as the title underscores, Hirst repositions the index in the space of the viewer. Viewers may choose to stare back rapt in eerie awe, or perhaps, smile back.
Damien Hirst is among the most notorious of a bold generation of British artists who emerged in the late eighties and early nineties and caused an international scandal in 1997 with a show entitled "Sensation" at the Royal Academy, London. Drawing on movements such as Pop and Minimalism in provocative ways, Hirst challenges us to look at the wonders and horrors of the world in which we live. His work examines the interstices between life and death, human and animal, science and art. Blurring traditional boundaries and exploding their limits, Hirst's art is sensational in the true meaning of the word.
From a distance and at first glance, Yes, but how do you really feel, 1996 could easily be confused with a natural history exhibit or Halloween extravaganza. As one gets closer to it and looks deeper, however, the artistic qualities of this piece emerge, and we see the skeletons as beautiful, fascinating structures--human sculpture. We are thus presented with a skeletal serial. The evacuated bodies are individually packaged in vitrines where the use of transparent and mirrored glass may bring to mind the work of Dan Graham, Jeff Koons or Donald Judd. As in Hirst's other works, the vitrines are crucial here for the way in which they encase, monumentalize, and aestheticize the skeletons they contain.
Yes, but how do you really feel, concerns the body of decay--it's function and composition--inside and out. The traditional modes of distinction between man and animal are complicated in this work for here is a body without a being. In the absence of the spirit and the intellect, man is different from animal only in form. The display case--an appropriation of the Minimalist box--becomes man's cage. The skeletons hang in a captivity of their creation, an idea which is visually heightened by the repetition of bodies which are at once alien and intimate to us. As viewers, we are separated from the objects by the formal vitrine and yet we cannot help but imagine ourselves inside them somehow. The skeleton is what is inside all of us and all that will be left after we die. One can only wonder why the artist chose six skeletons. Is six the right amount to mimic Warholian repetition and seriality? Or perhaps a distant Catholic reference to the six holy days of obligation? Or, in Hirst's aesthetic judgement, the number that it takes to make it feel ominous.
But if man's destiny is really this dismal, why are the skeletons all smiling? Morbid though it may be, there is an essential if dark humor that runs through all of Hirst's work, and the smile acts on many levels in this work. For one, it evokes an earlier photo-sculpture piece by the artist entitled With Dead Head, 1991 in which Hirst is captured posing with his arm around, and his face propped up against, the severed head of a corpse. Hirst recalls the inspiration behind With Dead Head: "I'm sixteen. It's ten years old. If you look at my face, I'm actually going: 'Quick. Quick. Take the photo.' It's worry. I wanted to show my friends, but I couldn't take my friends there, to the morgue in Leeds. I'm absolutely terrified. I'm grinning, but I'm expecting the eyes to open and for it to go: Grrrrraaaaagh!' To me, the smile and everything seemed to sum up this problem between life and death. It was such a ridiculous way of, like, being at the point of trying to come to terms with it, especially being sixteen and everything: this is life and this is death. And I'm trying to work it out" (Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn in On the Way to Work, New York: Universe, 2001, p. 34).
From this statement, we see the human in the artist--he too is capable of fear and disgust in the literal face of death. He recognizes limits and taboos, but transgresses them anyway. With Dead Head thus introduces the smile as an indexical mark of the human character in the artist's work. In Yes, but how do you really feel, as the title underscores, Hirst repositions the index in the space of the viewer. Viewers may choose to stare back rapt in eerie awe, or perhaps, smile back.